| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Jude Griebel is a figurative sculptor who works between Bergen, Alberta, and Brooklyn, New York. He creates sculptures of sympathetic figures that merge with architectural and landscape elements. In this liminal state, the characters speak to a range of anxieties, including contemporary consumption, industrial development, environmental degradation, and planetary collapse.
Crafted from combinations of clays, papier-mâché, textiles and hand-carved woods, Griebel’s works are playful in their attempt to bestow material form to fleeting psychological states. The anthropomorphic qualities of his figures borrow from a myriad of histories relating to the re-imagined body - from grotesque representations of the Renaissance era to the shape-shifting characters of mid-century popular cartoons.
Griebel’s richly detailed sculptures are rooted in display methods traditionally used in natural history dioramas and scientific didactic models. When applied to Griebel’s imaginative introspections, these elements cause the sculptures to waver between fantasy and objective understanding.
Griebel completed an MFA in Ceramics and Sculpture from Concordia University in Montreal, and has participated in numerous residencies including MASS MoCA, the ISCP in New York, and the Kunstnarhuset in Messen, Norway. He is the co-director of the Museum of Fear and Wonder, a Canadian museum that explores the psychological and narrative qualities of objects.
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