JEN WOHLNER
Jen Wohlner was born in Illinois in 1988. She received her BFA from the University of Southern California in 2010 and will receive her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024. Wohlner has exhibited solo at Wildfruit Projects in St. Louis, the Saint Kate in Milwaukee, and the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery in Los Angeles. Wohlner has been included in group exhibitions at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, CA and at Houska Gallery and the Angad Arts Hotel in St. Louis. Jen Wohlner lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. Jen Wohlner's website is jenwohlner.com, and her Instagram is @jensface.
Jen Wohlner’s detailed pen and colored pencil drawings, ceramic sculptures and Internet art address the repetitive architecture and planning of modern residential communities and the isolated individuals who inhabit them.
The drawings demonstrate a harsh endurance and obsession via precise pen lines and meticulously filled, almost machine-like, blocks of colored pencil. The drawings’ subject matter — homes, neighborhoods, the sun, mazes, religious messaging — invites viewers to reflect on the private, protective or exclusionary spaces in their domestic communities and neighborhoods. The ceramic sculptures are often figurative and fluid, but other times, they function more like trophies and awards. Wohlner's Internet art continues investigations into the themes above and often includes poetry and live video. Jen's art is a reflection on the unknowability and darkness of domestic, private, individual spaces.
