Jude Griebel: Estranged Setting

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Jude Griebel, "Bird Factory," 2016

mixed media

Estranged Setting presents two sculptures in an immersive painted environment. The works, Bird Factory (2016) and Trawl (2015), depict shifting anatomies that embody the complexities of contemporary consumption, industrial fishing, and agriculture. In Bird Factory, poultry populate a structure whose appearance hovers between that of a chicken’s body and an industrial farming complex. Cartoonish at a glance, the work plays with pop representations of the animal as a façade for the darker nature of its life within the food production system. In Trawl, an overburdened fishing net assumes the shape of a human body, with the boat dragging the net taking the place of the figure’s head. The work is a modern update of Arcimboldo’s Mannerist painting, The Ocean (1566), an anthropomorphic celebration of marine bounty. In Estranged Setting, bodies, food, and production methods merge in reflective and critical cycles.

Jude Griebel creates sculptures of hybrid bodies, whose anatomy is merged with their surroundings. These figures are compromised by situations of consumption, excess, and disregard, played out on their dioramic surfaces. In these works, he is not so much interested in how waste is generated, but rather how we re-digest popular images of accumulation and environmental degradation, weaving them into the fabric of our subconscious. His work has recently been presented at Galerie Sturm, Nuremberg; the Redpath Museum, Montreal; and in Future Station: The 2015 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton. Griebel was a 2015 artist-in-residence at HALLE 14 – Center for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, and was awarded the inaugural Alberta Foundation for the Arts residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn. He is two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant for emerging artists.