Jeff Mongrain has been described by Art in America’s contributing editor, Eleanor Heartney as restoring, “something that has been largely lost in the modern world… the sense that inanimate objects may serve as carriers of hidden meanings…the dream life of matter. His visually reductive forms are intentionally open to interpretation, making room for a dialogue about meanings and forms of beliefs…“
David Revere McFadden, the Chief Curator of the Museum of Arts and Design, further states, “the forms Mongrain creates become part of an ongoing vocabulary… reconfigured in each new setting where they absorb new meanings while retaining traces of their original contexts. Mongrain’s richly coded images are visually quiet, physically eloquent and conceptually meaningful.“
Mongrain will be in The Smithsonian Institute’s National Archive of oral histories of American Artists. His upcoming exhibitions include: The Scripps National, Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, CA (2013), the Museum of Modern Art, Slovenia (2012), the Museum of Glass, WA (2012) and the Icheon Museum, Korea (2011). Solo exhibitions include: Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, MO; San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, TX; Diego Rivera Museum, Mexico and Temple Gallery, Rome, Italy. Mongrain has internationally including: Favardin et de Verneuil Gallery, Paris, France, Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan, Biennal de la Ceramique, Belgium and The Australian Drawing Biennale, Australia.
His work has been reviewed in Art and America, The New York Times, ARTnews, Sculpture, The London Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Paris Times, The Korean Times, Image, World Sculpture and The Boston Globe. He taught for seven years at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland before Hunter College in NYC.