JENNY MORGAN

Jenny Morgan is widely recognized as one of the leading contemporary painters in the world today, with a focused studio practice that invigorates contemporary painting, packing an emotional resonance that is both fascinating and thoroughly rewarding for discerning viewers and the numerous collectors who have gravitated towards her work. Plus Gallery owner Ivar Zeile is one of the leading authorities on her work, particularly her output and collector base during the initial 12 years of her career, having compiled her first decade in two extensive publications New Territory and We are all setting suns.

Morgan was born in 1982 in Salt Lake City, Utah and received a BA from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Lakewood, Colorado. Her first three exhibitions were hosted at Denver’s revered cooperative gallery Pirate, before transferring fully to Plus Gallery where robust collector and market interest in her work began to develop. In 2009 she moved permanently to New York City, where should would obtain her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, New York and work briefly as an assistant to Marilyn Minter. Upon leaving the renowned artist’s studio, Morgan quickly established a celebrated career through her associations with Plus Gallery, Like the Spice, and Driscoll Babcock Gallery. She is now represented by Anat Ebgi, NYC.

Morgan’s 2013 solo exhibition ‘How To Find A Ghost’ was named one of the top 100 fall shows worldwide by Modern Painters in 2013. Her work has received critical attention in numerous publications including articles in Whitewall, Hi-Fructose, The Village Voice, The Denver Post, and others, with front cover features twice with Juxtapoz, as well as High Fructose, Art Ltd. and other arts publications. She celebrated her first solo museum exhibition “Skin Deep” with The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in 2017, accompanied by her first major museum catalog.

Morgan has realized several portraiture commissions for publications including The New York Times Magazine and New York Magazine. She has had solo exhibitions in London, New York, Colorado, Utah, Indiana, New Mexico, and has been in numerous group exhibitions including at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the 92Y Tribeca in New York City and Postmasters Gallery in Rome. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Purdue University Art Gallery, University of Maryland’s Stamp Student Union Art Collection, New Mexico State University, Flint Institute of Arts as well as major private collections throughout the world. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. In 2019 her alma mater Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design awarded her with their inaugural Radiance Award.

“Jenny Morgan – Self Portrait” is the first video composition with Morgan, developed with Plus Gallery, in which she discusses the more intimate details of several of her most compelling transitional paintings. Known for her exquisite and revealing self portraits as well as her interpretations of other people in her life, Morgan’s body of work redefines contemporary portraiture and our understanding of the genre.

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“I remember being struck by Jenny Morgan’s paintings when I saw her 2005 solo exhibition at Plus Gallery, in Denver. Even then, only a few years after graduating from her BFA program, she had great technical virtuosity. But more than her proficiency with paint, I felt that she was doing something bold and direct with her subject matter, the female nude. The subject could not have been more traditional. And yet Morgan’s paintings felt different. They felt contemporary. To this day Morgan finds fresh ways of exploring the same subject. As her technique advances, her ability to give a contemporary edge to a classic tradition remains. It is as if every painting is an emphatic response to one of the most basic calls of the artist: to make pictures that speak with a new voice to the pictures that have been made in the generations before.

Beyond contemporary and classical, Morgan’s unique approach to painting has many contradictions. Her works are about people but they are also about painting. They are tender depictions of flesh and striking fields of color. They contain natural, near-photorealist qualities combined with abstract and synthetic elements. Her subjects can be at once both vulnerable and defiant, sexy and spiritual. They are sometimes deadpan, almost scientific, and sometimes expressive and casual. These are the productive contradictions that make the work vital.”

Adam Lerner, Director, MCA Denver

From the forward to the publication SKINDEEP, 2017