DENVER, CO.- Jenny Morgan: Skindeep surveys the past decade of her painting career. The exhibition traces the development of Morgan’s distinctive style from traditional portraits made while she was in graduate school to recent works featuring bright, unconventional colors. It also includes the illustrative paintings of celebrity subjects that were commissioned for major American news publications, as well as more personal works for which the artist is best known. Skindeep emphasizes Morgan’s abilities as a formalist as much as it showcases her preternatural talent for realistic figuration.

The exhibition occupies MCA Denver’s first floor galleries during the summer months. Works from 2007-2009 that exemplify Morgan’s realistic portraiture occupy the first half of the David & Laura Merage Foundation Gallery, as well as works from the same period that showcase early formal experiments she made within the framework of portraiture. In the second half of the Merage Gallery are works that demonstrate the spiritual aspect of Morgan’s practice. The Atrium Gallery features five of Morgan’s paintings of celebrities, which together serve as a counterpoint to the rest of the works in the exhibition. The Luisa & Chris Law Gallery is dedicated to Morgan’s confrontational self-portraits.

Jenny Morgan was born in 1982 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She earned a BFA from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Lakewood, Colorado, in 2003, graduating as the valedictorian of her class. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2008. Her work has been included in exhibitions across the US, as well as in London and Sweden. She is represented by Driscoll Babcock Galleries in New York. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 52-page, full-color catalogue, published by MCA Denver.