Spring rider
Jeff Grant
March 28 – April 25, 2026
Opening Saturday March 28, 5-7 pm with an artist walk through at 4.30 pm
Keijsers Koning is pleased to present Jeff Grant’s solo exhibition titled Spring rider. In this exhibition, Jeff Grant presents kiddy things, grownup things, playful things, sober things, functional objects, obscured details, and crystallized moments of observation. Of particular focus are playgrounds, trees, mundane tools, and navels. These subjects draw attention to concepts of childhood and maturity, innocence and sophistication, leisure and labor: all notions of which Grant remains persistently skeptical.
A spring rider is a stationary child's rocker, mounted on a steel coil, that can be found in many playgrounds in the United States and in Berlin, Germany, where Grant works in the summers. Versions of these, as well as other pieces of playground equipment, appear throughout the exhibition, sometimes partially obscured, sometimes in sober solitude. These forms, and the suggested setting of the playground, are sometimes combined with images of useful objects or tools and devices for measurement. In Klick!, a video installation made in collaboration with Berlin-based artist Lukas Hofer, a metronome's consistent tempo plays off the ritardando of a wobbling, mushroom-shaped spring rider. Several drawings display playgrounds—sites often surrounded by trees and nature—as landscapes; while in other drawings, nature is incorporated into mock proposals suggestive of public sculpture or monuments. Such combinations belie the conceptual separation between childhood and adulthood, and propose an elaborate continuation, but more often a surprising conflation, of the two stages.
Some works take an almost visceral turn, in that they invite comparisons with one's own body. In Button group, a triptych of photographs of adult male navels is installed at navel-height. The navel is reminiscent of infancy and childhood, but add some hair, and you have grown men presented in moments of informality, intimacy, leisure, or play. Masculinity suggests, as is wont, hardness and durability, endurance and perseverance; but the navel is soft, exposed, and mortal. By isolating and documenting this small but central hollow of the body, Grant draws us belly-first into a subtle game of shifting priorities, desires, and meanings.
For more information or images please contact us at info@keijserskoning.com or 469.961.5391
