Relationship Status

JARED MCGRIFF’S PAINTINGS ABOUT FAMILY HISTORY HAVE MADE HIM ONE OF MIAMI’S MOST EXCITING—AND IN-DEMAND—ARTISTS

When he finally looks back at 2022, Jared McGriff will most likely do so fondly. In the span of those 12 months, give or take, the Miami Beach-based painter (who holds a BA in architecture from UC Berkeley as well as an MBA from NYU) saw the opening of his first solo museum exhibition at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, made his debut at The Armory Show in New York, won the Florida Prize from the Orlando Museum of Art, and was part of a solo presentation at the Rubell Museum in Allapattah during Art Week, which exposed his work to the well-heeled collectors that make their way to the city every December for Art Basel.

“2022 was special in that I had the chance to introduce my work to a broader audience,” says McGriff, who relocated to Miami from the Bay Area six years ago and is currently represented by Spinello Projects. “It’s exciting to expose the work to new people and see it well received locally and beyond. I’ve always wanted to work on a large scale and be in the contemporary conversation.”

Part of the conversation—the right one at that—he is, thanks to the way he’s chosen to address personal family connections through a history lens. Much of the work that’s gotten McGriff noticed has to do with real and imagined experiences that present relatives from his past as they migrated from the rural and racist South to Oklahoma and eventually California.

“They’re about longing and estrangement,” says McGriff about the blurred forms that have resonated so strongly with audiences. “I’ve had difficult relationships throughout my life, so I think imagined portraiture has helped me think about topics like belonging and agency in a way that is less personal and more of a function of the human condition. Creating portraits without a model or photographic reference is an attempt to consider how ambiguity and distortion are important aspects of our experience.”

This March, McGriff will expand those explorations with a new exhibition that will take him back west to LA’s Vielmetter gallery. “My new body of work is influenced by ruminations on nature and systems, like actual flora and fauna, and also the systems underlying our natural and social environments,” he says. “I’m introducing more landscape to the works, and giving more thought to place.” jaredmcgriff.com