Congratulations to SR Contributor Jenny Wu on her various exhibitions and projects!
This fall, Jenny is holding a solo exhibition: Otherly. Otherly includes abstract sculptural paintings by Jenny Wu. The exhibition title, referring to the state of being something else, embodies many facets of Wu’s work. As physical objects, they expand the traditional limitations of painting as two-dimensional, resulting in a novel medium that defies categorization. As visual images, her work is alternately reminiscent of op art, colorfield painting, landscape imagery, quilt making, or weaving, yet it is none of these. Thematically, Wu’s titles allude to notions of otherness, due to ethnicity, political differences, or personal histories.
Wu transforms paint from a flat medium to a palpable, malleable material. She pours paint, slices through its layers, and then manipulates these cross-sections to create sculptural compositions on wood panels. Once sealed within a thick, smooth resin coating, they call to mind a timeless permanence.
Wu’s use of paint layers stems from intriguing personal experiences. These include the adding and scraping away layers of paint while making traditional landscape painting a decade ago. The layers upon layers of posters she saw while visiting Rome also inform the process. The work also comments on the increasing use of technology in understanding art, where x-rays routinely expose under paintings and sketches in long-studied paintings. Wu exposes every step and layer of her creative process, but without technology and while rendering the original poured painting unrecognizable. The resulting patterns display repeated but subtly changing timelines of her process, measuring change and progress over time and coalescing into new, cohesive wholes.
The exhibition will be held September 25 – October 23, 2023 at the Widener Gallery, Austin Arts Center. Trinity College, 300 Summit St, Hartford, CT. Gallery hours are Mon-Fri 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sat. 1-5 p.m.
This summer was full of excitement for Jenny. She attended Bowery’s Gallery’s 32nd Annual Juried Competition, juried by David Cohen, alongside her friend Teresa Jade Jarzynski, whose painting was featured in the show. Additionally, Elephant Exchange or Whatever, a latex paint and resin on wood panel work, was selected by Lauren Nye to be part of Adams Count Arts Council’s 19th Annual Juried Art Exhibition. It was on display at the Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College and it won best of show. Jenny also recently became president for Touchstone Foundation for The Arts (TFA), a nonprofit tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization created by the artists of Touchstone Gallery to increase their engagement with the community around them.
Jenny’s latex paint and resin on wood panel work Magically Found $768,000,000,000 was acquired by University of Maryland, College Park through its Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP). The work will be on view through Sept. 30, 2023 in What We Do After: CAPP New Arrivals 2023, at the University of Maryland’s Stamp Gallery. The exhibition will also feature work from six other artists.
Jenny also has many upcoming projects.
From Sept. 5-Oct. 12, 2023, Jenny will be featured at the 45th Harper College National Juried Exhibition; Harper College, Palatine IL. From Sept. 1-30, 2023, Jenny will be showcased at CT Women Artists 2023 National Open Juried Show, Barnes-Franklin Gallery; Tunxis Community College, Farmington, CT.
On Feb. 17, 2024, Jenny will co-present Pedagogy and Community at the CAA annual conference in Chicago. She also has another solo exhibition It Depends with Morton Fine Art in Feb., 2024. The reception for the exhibition is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 24, 2-4 p.m.
We are so proud of Jenny and all that she is up to.
View 5 paintings by Jenny in issue 30 of Superstition Review.
Learn more about Jenny and her upcoming events here.
