JENNY MORGAN
American artist Jenny Morgan is widely recognized as one of the leading painters in the world today, with an intensely focused studio practice that has invigorated contemporary art since the inception of her career. Her complex, richly nuanced paintings deliver an emotional resonance that fascinates the mind while dazzling the eye, creating a thoroughly rewarding for discerning viewers and the numerous collectors who have gravitated towards her work. During my two decades as the owner and Director of Plus Gallery, I had the great fortune to launch and nurture Morgan’s career from the moment she first entered the market following her undergraduate studies at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, and become the leading authority through the most prodigious growth phase of her work. Recognizing Morgan’s extraordinary gifts and nature from the beginning, my efforts to raise her presence through multiple solo exhibitions, group shows and support of major museum exhibitions served to establish a substantial, devoted collector base that set the tenor for her eventual transition to the upper echelons of the NYC art scene. To celebrate her mature focus and highly intuitive practice I compiled two extensive publications documenting the first decade of her output in total: New Territory and We are all setting suns, both available in hardback for her many collectors through blurb.com, as well as an additional soft bound publication produced in tandem with her major 2017 solo exhibition Jenny Morgan: Self Portraits in Colorado Collections.
“Jenny Morgan – Self Portrait” is the first video composition I developed with Jenny in order to reference her paintings directly through her own words. In this impromptu document she discusses intimate details of several of her most compelling transitional paintings, noting a seismic shift following her Masters studies at NYC’s School of Visual Arts. Known for her exquisite and revealing self portraits as well as her interpretations through other people in her life, Morgan’s body of work absolutely redefined contemporary portraiture and our understanding of the genre during the expansive period of her early career.
I maintain an extensive personal archive of materials relating to Morgan’s career, dating back to when publicity through press and print were the quintessential formats for lifting and validating an artists place within the common market. The materials serve as a rare and robust reference that help define and understand the complete picture of Morgan’s sensational growth and wide acceptance by collectors, the community, institutions and press alike.
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, prior to her transferring fully to Plus Gallery where robust collector and market interest in her work began to fully 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 currently 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. Her work is in the permanent collections of several public museums and institutions 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; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; and Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, Denver, CO.
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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, published in conjunction with Morgan’s first major solo museum exhibition hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver with support from Plus Gallery.
