Washington, D.C. - Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce It Depends, a solo exhibition of new sculptural paintings by artist Jenny Wu. Returning with a new body of work following last year’s Ai Yo! (2023), Wu’s restless experimentation and curiosity continue to drive her exploration of composition, color, control, chance and surprise. Her studio practice tends to rigorously review and reuse; the seeds of one series are often born out of observations, lessons learned or leftover parts of another series. Expanding her technique with new formal and perceptual approaches, It Depends shines, blends and even tricks the eye, introducing elements of gradient and newfound illusion and depth into her work. Wu’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, It Depends, will be on view from February 15 - March 16, 2024 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).

Continuing to build on her core practice, It Depends features Wu introducing a number of new forms and approaches: blending and gradient patterns, works on a hexagon panel, and works embedded with other designs and fragments (what Wu likens to a “frame-in-frame” composition). Intimating nesting digital screens or forms behind glassy, opaque fields, these visual associates are incidental to Wu. Frequently sized at 36 x 12 in., Wu’s narrow, flowing gradient works (e.g. Reset to Zero at the Border Control, (2023)) remind her passingly of Chinese landscape and scroll painting; in her practice of change and surprise, it is interesting that some incidental elements are inescapable. To create all her works, the artist pours thick coats of latex paint onto silicone surfaces, allowing each layer to in turn dry completely before adding another layer of latex; Wu then cuts the accumulated paint to reveal layers of colorful cross-sections, often touched by chance elements. Using these cross-sections as her base units, Wu assembles her paintings, building up relief, depth, illusion and a minimalist's sense of embodied paint, piece by piece.

Exploring new forms upon which to build her sculptural paintings, Wu has come to embrace the hexagon panel, finding in it a range of compositional and material opportunities. As can be seen in A Useless Tree Is A Tree (2023), Wu exploits the formal qualities of the hexagon to draw out and accentuate her sensation- and perception-minded use of color, volume and illusion. Enlivened by her material, temporal approach to paint, the work twists with a thick perceptual frisson. Wu’s “frame-in-frame” paintings double down on her longstanding interest in transformation and in recording and embodying time, labor and incident. The result of Wu embedding rectangle forms into a larger frame that she then filled with paint, the shimmering vertical rectangles of dark turquoise and dull yellow in I Cringe Every Time I Have To Say My Name Backwards (2023) simultaneously foreground and underpin the work. The painting teases at collage and self-reference. But with I Cringe Every Time… Wu is far more interested the effects of time and accumulation than any conceptual associations.  

Titles continue to occupy an important, refracted role amid Wu’s practice. Moving on from sourcing her titles predominantly from the internet, Wu’s new titles spring diary-esque from the everyday. Wu notes down an interesting thought whenever one comes to her, adding overheard comments, wry faux-quotations and tidbits from the news to a running list over which she later reviews, choosing some to title new works. The titles and her approach to assembling and assigning them (often at random and by chance or whim) compound the constructive, layered and change elements of Wu’s paintings.

All the while demonstrating a greater feel and technique for pouring, drying and composing wet and dried paint—cracking that used to be a frequent element of the drying process is now far less present—It Depends finds Wu extending and deepening her practice, at once a refinement and a risk.

Jenny Wu is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, and the president of Touchstone Foundation for the Arts in Washington, D.C.Wu’s work acknowledges the sensational and perceptual properties of materiality and then transforms the materials from their original forms and purpose to present them within new contexts. Her work has been reviewed by the Washington Post. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums including Denise Bibro Fine Art, Katzen Museum, Huntington Museum of Art, Reece Museum, Vilnius Academy of Arts in Lithuania, and CICA Museum in South Korea.Wu’s works are in the permanent collections of the Flamboyan Foundation, University of Maryland College Park, Boston Consulting Group, Chautauqua Institution, DC Art Bank, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and so on. Wu has participated in numerous Artist-In-Residence programs across the country; and has been awarded fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.Jenny Wu was born in Nanjing, China. She holds a B.A. from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Studio Art as well as in Architectural Studies, and an M.F.A. in Studio Art from American University.

Morton Fine Art

Founded in 2010 in Washington D.C. by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA's mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African and Global Diaspora.