Jenny Morgan - RISE

RISE is a critical document for patrons and fans of Brooklyn based artist Jenny Morgan, one of the most celebrated painters in America over the last decade. This publication is a chronicle of her largest solo exhibition to date, and undoubtedly her most potent and thrilling. “Rise – Jenny Morgan Self Portraits in Colorado Collections from between 2009 and 2016” is presented at the Sangre de Cristo Art Center in Pueblo, Colorado from October 7th, 2016 through January 15th, 2017. The exhibition consists of 20 paintings spread among eleven private Colorado-based art collections, as well as Morgan’s most recent two large-scale paintings completed in the fall of 2016. RISE is a snapshot into one of the most exciting art practices of our times, shaping historic antecedents in a manner that is highly nuanced and thoroughly compelling. Almost everyone who has collected her work or become familiar with Morgan’s work understands and reveres this particular engagement, most obsessively so.

For the majority of Morgan’s collectors, nothing holds more reverence within her art than her self portraits, a constantly shifting, dynamic process that taps into her innermost thoughts, anxieties, as well as fresh angles into painting that resolve best around herself. Each and every painting in RISE has a story behind it, whether in relation to the greater exhibition or moment they emanated from, or simply the collectors pursuit of and fondness for the work. This ambitious show presents a substantial declaration at the mid-point of Jenny Morgan’s second decade exhibiting as an artist.