Jenny Wu: Order and Surprise
By Laura Heyrman
Jenny Wu (Chinese-American) constructs her works out of multicolored blocks and strips, attaching them to a wood panel. The design is then encased in resin, intensifying the colors and, to some extent, disguising the artist’s materials. The artist begins by spreading layers of latex paint on silicone sheets or glass, allowing each layer to dry before another color is added on top. Once multiple layers are complete, Wu cuts the sheets of paint into small blocks or long strips. In some cases, such as Stock Market Prices hit an all time high, included in the slide show, the pieces of paint have different thicknesses and are applied in rough columns, allowing the color of the painted wood support to show through. In this example, the chips of dried paint at the bottom of the composition, especially visible in the detail view included in the slide show, hint at the liquid origins of the pieces of the paint.
“The crosssection juxtaposes order and chaos: the consistent order of paint from old to new, and the imperfection of subtle differences in thicknesses.” – Jenny Wu
Wu is based in Washington DC, but also teaches as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In addition to her artistic practice, the artist is active in bringing art opportunities to the broader Washington community as the chair of the Touchstone Foundation for the Arts. An outreach program of Washington’s artist-run Touchstone Gallery, the Foundation offers fellowships to provide mentoring and exhibitions to emerging artists. It also sponsors classes, internships, art administration training, teen nights, and student art shows. At her exhibition But, Rational, presented earlier this year at Ball and Socket Arts in Cheshire, Connecticut, Wu’s Art For The People Project invited visitors to take home a small block of her dried paint. The artist asked that participants place the block in a new context, photograph it, and then send her the photo. The project reflects Wu’s interest in community engagement and the theme of changing contexts in her art. Photo submissions from this project can be seen on the artist’s website. jennywu.art/cube
“Balancing clarity and surprise, my sculptural paintings are the result of countless juxtapositions and an expanding set of contexts.” – Jenny Wu
Though Wu’s early works were representational and painted in a conventional way, she kept experimenting with different materials until she discovered her current technique and abstract style. One of the techniques that the artist began exploring around 2014 was installation art, often using strips of VHS or cassette tape to create interactive spaces. Self-Isolation Isolating Self, in the slide show, is an example from 2021. Visitors could walk between and through the hanging curtains of tape, adding touch and hearing to the visual experience of the work.
In 2016, Wu produced her first “sculptural paintings” using shards of dried paint. Over the past ten years, the artist has explored many color combinations and compositional possibilities. Her work explores the nature of her materials and how they can be changed by varying their context and arrangement. Tessellated patterns are a recurring theme; in the slide show, this can be seen in works from 2020, 2023, and 2025. Beginning around 2020, Wu added hexagonal supports to the mostly square compositions she’d been creating. Only Organic Catnip For Our Children has a hexagonal support echoed by the hexagonal tessellation that covers it, but other hexagonal works play with geometry in different ways. Wu began to work with curving patterns around 2022; these contrast strongly with their rectilinear supports. In her most recent works organic forms have been introduced, as seen in Let’s Go Get Emotional Support Lunch.
The unusual, sometime humorous, titles that Wu applies to her paintings are drawn from her musings during their labor-intensive creation or from random phrases she has spoken or heard. Her earliest titles often addressed current political and economic situations, but most of the time the connection between the titles and the visual form of the works is mysterious.
“… my titling compounds the humorous and constructive elements, and expands the space from the physical work to its title.” – Jenny Wu
Wu is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC and has exhibited in galleries and museums around the United States, as well as in Lithuania and South Korea. Her unusual method of constructing her paintings has yielded an astonishing variety of color effects and patterns ranging from the geometric to the organic. Because the layered paint conveys a sense of the original material, as well as the passage of time, the artist sees them as records of their own making.
“My sculptural paintings explore composition, color, expertise, control, chance, and surprise.” – Jenny Wu
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