Jeffrey Mongrain creates both gallery-based works and site-specific pieces. The sited works are primarily located in spiritual spaces. His gallery-based sculptures are reductive and generally reference iconic forms. There is a compelling oblique narrative suggested by Mongrain’s sculptures that also reflects an autobiographical politic. Scientific findings and religious philosophy are the conceptual foundation of his emotive forms.
As described by Art in America’s Contributing Editor, Eleanor Heartney “Jeffrey Mongrain brings a human dimension to abstracted yet iconic forms. Obliquely references personal metaphor, history, science, sensuality, and the pervasive echoes of sacred spaces he astutely balances form and content. Mongrain’s richly coded images are visually quiet, physically eloquent and conceptually meaningful.”
David Revere McFadden, the Chief Curator of the Museum of Arts and Design, further states, “Jeffrey Mongrain takes the viewer on a journey in to the world of experience and meaning on several concurrent levels. Physically and visually, Mongrain’s forms are simple, elegant and even austere, drawing upon the humble elements of the tangible world with which we are entirely familiar and comfortable. The form is revealed with grace and virtuosity. At the same time, each of these forms encase mysteries, these are the secrets of association, reference, memory and science that inhabit Mongrain’s world.”
Some of Mongrain’s recent solo exhibitions include The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, MO, The San Angelo Museum of Fine Art in San Angelo, TX, The National Museum of Catholic Art in New York City, The Diego Rivera Museum in Guanajuato, Mexico, the Temple Gallery in Rome, Italy, The Newcastle Regional Art Gallery in Australia, The Museo de Antropologia in Mexico, the John Elder Gallery in New York City, and the Perimeter Gallery in Chicago. Jeffrey has also represented the United States in the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates, and the 8th Triennial at The Museum of Arts and Design in New York and the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst in Frankfort, Germany.
His work has been reviewed in Art and America, The New York Times, ARTnews, Sculpture, The London Times, The Chicago Tribune, World Sculpture, The Boston Globe and Arte & Artes International. Jeffrey Mongrain has been a Professor of Art at Hunter College in New York City since 1995. He previously taught for seven years at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland.
