Jude Griebel: Nature Bends for You

Jude Griebel’s work is known for its mischievous and morally pointed whimsy. In his new work for the Gallery, human forms are again merged with the natural world in amusing and troubling ways. But Nature Bends for You ups the visual and emotional ante. Fresh from a residency at Kohler Pottery Studios in Wisconsin, the artist’s new Vitreous China pieces have a deceptively beautiful lustre. Shining green hands, rather than a fibrous husk, enclose a cob of corn. Oranges engage in sacrificial juicing, flowers amputate themselves, and a fried egg teeters on legs as existentially spindly as Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man.

While it goes without saying that the natural world has been devastated by human greed and consumption, and while much ink has been spilled on the psychic aftereffects–eco-anxiety, loss of agency, a pervasive atmosphere of doom–Griebel’s work operates in a further emotional sphere. His work can be read as an expression of deep nostalgia. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” wrote Shakespeare. “And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” Griebel’s work speaks to a universal longing for such an impossibly alive and integrated world.

If there is any hope in Griebel’s art, it lies in its sense of childhood imagination. Children play with the food on their plates and so does Griebel in his ceramic work Broken Circle. A sprig of parsley for a nose, lemons for cheeks, two ramekins of cocktail sauce for the all-seeing, blood-red eyes. Broken Circle appears guileless and innocent. But the face is also a record of trauma.

As Griebel’s characters feel plucked from the pages of fairytales, they’re also enveloped in visceral and emotional horror. Children internalize the plight of the runaway gingerbread man, fleeing for his life. They’ll also admonish each other for ripping the papery “skin” from Birch trees. Griebel’s work, then, is about what many children innately know. Everything is alive. Animals, trees–obviously. But also dishes running away with spoons. When we mature into rational adults, we lose our magical thinking. The kind of empathy we lack, and the instrumentalization of all beings, stems from the enlightened stripping away of sentience from creation.

When anthropomorphism is used tactically, as it was in KFC’s “chicky” mascot of the late 1990’s, it becomes, according to Griebel’s research, a “troubling projection of our entanglement with the natural world.” It cute-i-fies the slaughterhouse, the processing plant. But in his work, Griebel uses anthropomorphism as a wake-up call, a siren from the remote depths of childhood. Through the realization of Griebel’s’ imaginary friends, we feel a touch of magical affinity again.

-Sarah Swan, 2026

Sarah Swan is a Yellowknife-based curator and art writer whose bylines include Galleries West, Studio Magazine, Maisonneuve, and the Winnipeg Free Press.

Jude Griebel graduated with a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada. He later completed an MFA International Exchange at the University of Lapland in Finland before completing his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Ceramics from Concordia University in Canada. In the last year alone, he has participated in artist residencies at the John Michael Kohler Foundation, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, and the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), and has been awarded grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Calgary Arts Development. The artist has been announced as a finalist for the David Suzuki Foundation's Rewilding Arts Prize, with winners to be announced in April 2026. He is a recipient of a 2026 Guggenhiem Fellowship award.

Nature Bends for You is Griebel’s second solo exhibition with Massey Klein Gallery. His first solo exhibition, Revenants, was on view February 10th through March 23rd, 2024. In the Fall of 2024, two sculptures by the artist were featured at NADA House on Governor's Island, and in the Spring of 2025, the Gallery featured a solo presentation of the artist’s work at NADA New York.

Recent institutional exhibitions include those at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center (currently on view), Le Carmel Pamiers/ Les Abattoirs, Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives, Alberta Foundation for the Arts Art House, IA&A at Hillyer Contemporary Art Center, Leitrim Sculpture Center, Rochester Center for Contemporary Art, Whyte Museum, and International Museum of Surgical Science.

Noteworthy press includes Galleries West, Hyperallergic, Canadian Art Magazine, Art + Design Magazine, and The National Gallery of Canada Magazine.

Griebel’s work is in permanent collections at John Michael Kohler Arts Center and Kohler Co., Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Le Carmel Pamiers, Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary, Art Gallery of Alberta, Frans Masereel Centrum, Colart Contemporary Canadian Art Collection, Sakima Art Museum, Equitable Bank Group, Silpakorn University, Silvercorp Mining, and Volpert Foundation. Having grown up on a family farm in rural Alberta, the artist now lives and works in New York City.

Massey Klein Gallery is located at 124 Forsyth St. New York, NY 10002. Gallery hours are Wednesday - Saturday, 12pm-5pm. To schedule a private viewing, please email info@masseyklein.com.

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