Installation photo credit: Jeff McLane

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 17, 4 – 6 pm

Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to announce Miami-based artist Jared McGriff’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, The Stakes Are Myself, on view from May 17th through June 28th, 2025.

The exhibition’s title alludes to the late Beat poet Diane di Prima’s poems from the “Revolutionary Letters” series. Written between 1968 and 1971, these letters were produced during a time of political and cultural upheaval in America, emphasizing the necessity of taking risks as a means of survival in an oppressive world. Honoring di Prima’s work and using it as a guide to respond to today’s political turmoil, McGriff draws inspiration from “Revolutionary Letter #1,” which opens with this powerful statement: “I have just realized that the stakes are myself, I have no other ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life.”

Each of McGriff’s new paintings in the exhibition illustrates a scene of “risk-taking” in everyday life–gambling, horse racing, fishing–activities that are woven into our social fabric and serve as a potent metaphor for chance, probability, and luck throughout the show. For McGriff, these scenes represent a microcosm of the existential risks of existence, shedding light on how we navigate uncertainty in life and how we harness or mitigate it. In the painting The Inherent Risk of Surviving Infancy, in Trio (2025), three men engaged in a game of dice are captured mid-play. The moment is frozen in drama, creating a nearly Renaissance-like composition, though the actual dice remain just out of sight. By concentrating on the figures and their expressions and gestures, McGriff emphasizes the emotional and psychological dynamics of the players instead of the game’s outcome. Consequently, the game itself transforms into a theatrical stage for catharsis and serves as a powerful metaphor for chance, probability, and luck.

In the paintings A Conduit of Trust (2025) and An Engine of Instinct and Intuition (2025), McGriff depicts dramatically cropped portraits of a croupier and a gambler against pitch-black backgrounds. The gambler, with eyes cast down and a cigarette in his mouth, coolly contemplates his next move, the darkness of the background enhancing the melodrama of the moment before he plays his next card. The croupier is caught mid-move, shifting the chips either toward or away from the unseen figure at the other end of the table – a card turned face down contrasts with her palm facing up, signaling the potential for action and opportunity.

Jared McGriff (Los Angeles, 1977) received his BA in architecture from the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley in 1999 and his MBA from New York University in 2008.

Solo exhibitions include Alone, Together (2019) and Only Touching the Ground to Jump (2020) at Spinello Projects, and a solo exhibition at Vielmetter Los Angeles, On Being a Wild Dream (2023). His work has been featured in solo booth presentations at NADA Miami (2020), Expo Chicago (2022), The Armory Show (2022), 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair – New York (2023, 2024). In 2021, McGriff had his debut museum solo exhibition, Where We Are You, at NSU Art Museum, curated by Bonnie Clearwater. He has been featured in museum group exhibitions at ICA Miami, Orlando Museum of Art, The Norton Museum of Art, and El Espacio 23.