May 9 – July 3, 2025
Opening Reception:
Friday, May 9, 2025
6 – 8 PM
CLAMP is pleased to present “Grandfathered In,” a solo exhibition of new drawings by Jill Greenberg. Internationally renowned for her instantly recognizable photographs, Greenberg returns to her foundational practice of drawing, employing charcoal, pastel, and oil to explore themes of memory, instinct, and play.
The works from “Grandfathered In” are rooted in automatic drawing—a technique she first encountered as a child through a game with her father, where he would draw a line and she would transform it into a figure. This spirit of free association and improvisation permeates the show, as Greenberg embraces the immediacy and tactility of her materials to capture the raw energy of initial marks.
Inspired by the spontaneity and energetic action painting of CoBrA artists; the exploration of the unconscious mind challenging rational thought espoused by the surrealists; and the unvarnished feminism of contemporary figures such as Sue Williams; Greenberg’s drawings cheerfully perambulate the abyss separating intention and impulse. The result is a series of works that are primal, experimental, and often fun.
The artist’s significant return to her earliest practice of drawing accelerated in 2020 and was more formally realized during portrait painting sessions in 2024.
Jill Greenberg’s work has appeared in numerous prestigious publications such as the New Yorker, Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Sun, Blink, Harper’s Magazine, Art Ltd Magazine, and French Photo. Her art has been exhibited in a great number of gallery and museum exhibitions all around the world, including mid-career retrospectives at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Fotografiska in Stockholm, Sweden. Her art is represented in such permanent collections as the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; The Kemper Museum, Kansas City, Missouri; National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; among others.