Jake Grewal
Born in London, 1994. Lives and works in London.
Grewal’s work blends the language of Romanticism with his South Asian heritage to express autobiographical experiences. Themes of identity, love, loss, violence and adolescence are explored through a queer gaze, creating a dream-like reality based in nature.*
“As I paint I place equal importance on the figure as I do the landscape. I try to treat both equally and as abstractly as possible, blurring the lines between where one ends and the other begins. I play within the figure and outside of the figure creating a dialogue between the two so they begin to merge. A sharing of atmosphere where one is penetrating the other. This can open up ambiguity within the work and motifs can be seen fluidly. In this sense imagination is crucial in creating and reading the work. A figure can be a tree and a tree can be a figure, they are one in the same. I remember being a child and this kind of thinking would come naturally. Imagination would allow reality to turn into something other almost instantaneously. I’m interested by a duplicity and plurality within the work.”
Recent group shows include Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020, South London Gallery; Deity, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh; Everyday is Sunday, UTA Artists Space, Beverly Hills and No Time Like The Present, Public Gallery, London.
Jake won both the Cass Art Award and Woon Foundation Prize Judge's Discretionary Award in 2016. In 2020 he participated in the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Drawing Marathon residency.
Jake Grewal graduated from The University of Brighton with a first class honors in Fine Art degree in 2016.
