"This Too Shall Pass" artist shows staying power
By Kyle MacMillan
Denver Post Fine Arts Critic
Posted: 11/13/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Jenny Morgan "New Territory"
Jenny Morgan grabbed the eye of the Denver art world even before she graduated from the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design in 2003 — the valedictorian of her class.
Her talent was obvious, but it was hard not to wonder if the hoopla surrounding her early figurative work was too much, too soon.
As a compelling new solo exhibition at the Plus Gallery makes clear, the now 27-year-old Salt Lake City native needed time to mature as a person and grow as an artist.
And that is exactly what she has done in the past three years, earning her master of fine arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and becoming an assistant to top-tier artist Marilyn Minter.
Jenny Morgan "Breach"
Along the way, her work has gained focus, depth and provocativeness. She has left behind the early paintings that verged on gimmickry, relying too heavily on repeated devices such as tight cropping and the depiction of only sections of figures.
Morgan has moved toward straight-on portraits that display a welcome new level of technical and conceptual sophistication. Eight of her oils on canvas — all strong examples — are showcased in the Plus show, which is titled "This Too Shall Pass."
Each vividly conveys a sense of the sitter and contains such impeccably detailed features as the stunningly realized hair in "Self-Portrait No. 27," in which minute, unruly strands can be seen poking up from the artist's head.
Morgan could easily stick to super-realism and be quite successful at it, but it is clear that her ambitions run in a more daring and intensely contemporary direction.
To varying degrees in each canvas, she manipulates the portraits, undertaking what she calls "deconstructing the figure." For the most part, that means shrouding, obscuring or darkening parts of the composition.
In "Self-Portrait No. 27," the face looks as though it has been coated in charcoal dust, an intervention that bluntly contrasts with the rest of the realistically rendered portrait and casts a disturbing pall over the piece.
In some ways, the effect is even more pronounced in "The Fabricator," in which the male sitter's head and shoulders have been given a red cast, as though his body were covered in red make-up. He is offset against a solid background, creating another sharp-edged contrast.
Rather than creating these effects by covering over parts of her compositions, she carefully removes the upper layers of paint to reveal those underneath, most often the red under-paint.
In "Old Soul," the largest of the selections at 52 by 36 inches, Morgan has used this technique in a slightly different but equally effective way. She has filled the outline of the sitter's hair with bright, unmodulated red and pink, creating a kind of brash, eye-grabbing frame around the face.
The effect of these interventions is to disrupt the painterly illusion of the realism and make clear the presence of the artist's hand, creating a fascinating duality that gives these pieces depth and elevates them above so much other work of this kind.
These disruptions also create a tension that adds to the unsettled feeling that suffuses all these selections to varying degrees. In only one, "The Source," does the sitter have anything approaching a smile.
The other sitters appear anxious, at the least. And in the case of the self-portrait, "New Territory," the artist appears scared, as she yanks strands of hair straight down with her right hand and pulls others across her mouth with her left hand.
With this impressive showing, Morgan solidifies her place as an up-and-coming artist with genuine promise. It will be exciting to see where her painting goes from here.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
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"THIS TOO SHALL PASS."
Art. Plus Gallery, 2501 Larimer St. A solo exhibition of manipulated portraits by Jenny Morgan, a 2003 graduate of the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. Through Nov. 28. Noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Free. 303-296-0927 or plusgallery.com.