JENNY MORGAN

In Hours at the Edge, Jenny Morgan depicts women and, for the first time, birds of prey, their forms ebbing in and out of focus against atmospheric fields of color. Produced over the past two years, the exhibition extends Morgan’s longstanding investigation of portraiture and the relationship between artist and muse. Working with models whose likenesses she has returned to over many years, Morgan renders figures that seem to exist at the edge of reality, moving between precise realism and diaphanous abstraction; her paintings examine the relationship between the body and consciousness.

In The Connector, a falcon’s outstretched wings envelop a partially obscured human face, while another painting depicts an owl whose eyes contain traces of human reflection. In preparation for the exhibition, Morgan made several visits to a falconry in Upstate New York, observing the birds’ behavior and studying their anatomy at close range. For Morgan, painting is a means of getting to know her subjects, a process of sustained observation through which the atmosphere of each image is molded to its form.

Faces emerge from dense fields of fur, folds of fabric, and wispy vapors, while fragmented forms resembling broken masks or statuary float in abstract space. Throughout the exhibition, Morgan draws correspondences between different materials and organisms: hair merges with flame, foliage resembles feathers, and wood assumes the appearance of water. These transformations suggest a continuity between human, animal, and other natural forms, complicating the boundaries that ordinarily distinguish them.

Working with a restricted palette, Morgan maintains a fidelity to realism, testing how long she can sustain the illusion before introducing painterly gestures that disrupt the picture. In the monumental reclining nude The Stranger, a woman’s blue-green body rests against an expanse of satin, her hair integrating into the surrounding darkness while bright white light illuminates her upper thigh. Drawing on the art historical tradition of the reclining nude, the painting considers the body as a metaphysical subject, and suggests the soul’s departure from its corporeal form. Elsewhere, stitched spirals and tacked canvas edges extend Morgan’s exploration of painting as a material object. Associated with the movement of the spirit, the spiral evokes a perpetual transition between physical and immaterial states.

Jenny Morgan (b. 1982 Salt Lake City, UT) holds a BA from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Denver, CO and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. Her first solo museum exhibition Skin Deep with the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver took place in 2017. Morgan has had solo exhibitions in New York, London, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Summer Lovin’ at Stems Gallery, Paris, France; Corpo e Mente at LVH Art, Venice, Italy; If you forget my name, you will go astray at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; and Women of Now at the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX. Her work is in the permanent collections of several public museums including Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL; Purdue University Art Gallery, West Lafayette, IN; Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL; Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI; UNiversity of Maryland’s Stamp Student Union Art Collection, College Park, MD; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; and Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI. Morgan lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.