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Jennifer Packer

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Jennifer Packer
Born1984
Philadelphia, PA
NationalityAmerican
EducationTyler School of Art
BFA – 2007
Yale University School of Art
MFA – 2012
Known forVisual Art
AwardsHermitage Greenfield Prize and the Rome Prize

Jennifer Packer (born 1984)[1] is a contemporary American painter and educator based in New York City.[2] Packer's subject matter includes political portraits, interior scenes, and still life featuring contemporary Black American experiences. She paints portraits of contemporaries, funerary flower arrangements, and other subjects through close observation.[3] Primarily working in oil paint, her style uses loose, improvisational brush strokes, and a limited color palette.[2]

External videos
video icon “Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing”, Whitney Museum of American Art, March 23, 2022

Early life and education

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Packer was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[4][5] She attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2007. In 2012, she graduated from Yale University with a Master of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking.[5]

Work

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Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Jennifer Packer's first college before going to Yale University.

After completing her MFA, Packer moved to the Bronx, and later became an assistant professor in the painting department at Rhode Island School of Design.[6] She is currently an assistant professor at Cooper Union.[7]

Themes within art

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Packer has been inspired by social justice movements, which can be seen through her floral work representing institutional violence against Black Americans and the resulting grief.[3] For her portraits, she depicts friends and family in an intimate style that is meant to avoid a straightforward reading.[2][4][5] In 2013, she made art featuring body parts such as fingers, knees, and protruding jaw lines of straining bodies emerging from the haze, an example of which is Lost In Translation. In 2017, Transfiguration (He's No Saint)[8] shows a young African-American man wearing glasses with two raised arms. The majority of his body is rendered dramatically in brilliant yellow, red, and green. This work represents the prevention of a stop and search of a Black man by police. Circular parts on his flesh signify the marks of stigmata. The figure's eyes are half closed, indicating loss of what he is or expects out of the world. The Mind Is Its Own Place (2020)[9] shows a level of depression and complexity of the human mind within her work through a limited palette in a charcoal drawing.

Settings on art

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Packer's subjects are African Americans, and her themes center around oneness. Her art is political,[10] recognizing the social discord all people witness or are affected by in this generation. Despite her art not focusing on the entirety of social injustice, it does bring awareness to inequality within the United States.[11] Visually Impaired is one of her early works which expresses realization and abstraction. It intends to resemble Ferdinand Holder's 19th century deathbed art pieces. In some of her 2017 artwork, she aimed to achieve contrast and depth. Say Her Name, a flower oil canvas piece, is another example, created as a growing flower drawn like a forest.[10] According to a video interview, in most of her early works she decides to create a memento, a slight reference in her artwork to a past artist she was either inspired by or had similar real-life goals in art. Packer tends to draw most human figures with realistic details.

Artistic practice

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Packer paints expressionist portraits, interior scenes, and still life.[12] She is interested in authenticity, encounters, and exchanges in relation to her painting practice. The models for her portraits are often friends or family members.[6]

In her 2020 exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London, her expressionistic paintings were all oils on canvas. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!) shows her reaction to the killing of Breonna Taylor. A painting of flowers, a traditional form of still life, was used in Say Her Name to reference the death of Sandra Bland. Other portraits indicate inspiration from western sources as diverse as Henri Matisse and Caravaggio as well as Americans Kerry James Marshall and Philip Guston.[13]

She was included in the 2019 traveling exhibition Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art.[14]

Selected exhibitions

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Awards and Fellowships

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In 2013, Packer was awarded the Rema Hort Mann Grant.[4] In 2012–2013, Packer was an Artist-in-Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem,[25] and from 2014 to 2016, a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.[4][26][27]

In 2020, she won the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, which included a commission to produce a new work that will premiere in 2022 at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.[27] Packer also won the Rome Prize in 2020 from the American Academy in Rome and was a Rome Prize Fellow from January 11–August 6, 2021.[28]

References

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  1. ^ Cotter, Holland (29 November 2012). "Racial Redefinition in Progress". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 21 January 2024. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  2. ^ a b c "Jennifer Packer". Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Archived from the original on 28 March 2023. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  3. ^ a b "Exhibitions: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing". Serpentine Galleries. 2021. Archived from the original on 5 November 2023. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e "Exhibitions | Jennifer Packer: Tenderheaded". Renaissance Society. 2017. Archived from the original on 4 June 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  5. ^ a b c Perrée, Rob (8 May 2014). "Jennifer Packer". AFRICANAH.ORG. Archived from the original on 22 January 2024. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
  6. ^ a b "Painting Faculty: Jennifer Packer - Associate Professor". Rhode Island School of Design. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
  7. ^ "Jennifer Packer". The Cooper Union. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  8. ^ Phillips, Claire (2 February 2021). "Jennifer Packer: The Eye is Not Satisfied with Seeing". The Brooklyn Rail. Archived from the original on 31 July 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  9. ^ a b "Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing". Whitney Museum. 2021. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
  10. ^ a b Hardinon, Marques (4 June 2021). "Artist Spotlight: Jennifer Packer". Manifesto!. Artgence. Archived from the original on 26 June 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  11. ^ Joseph, Ella. "'The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing': review". theboar.org/. Retrieved 27 March 2024.
  12. ^ Manlaykhaf, Youssra; McVeigh, Róisín. "Jennifer Packer's Political Still Lifes & Intimate Portraits Centre Black lives". www.serpentinegalleries.org/. Retrieved 27 March 2024.
  13. ^ a b Gompertz, Will (5 December 2020). "Jennifer Packer: Will Gompertz reviews the artist's show at the Serpentine Gallery". BBC News. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  14. ^ Sargent, Antwaun, ed. (2020). Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art. New York, NY: Distributed Art Publishers. pp. 156–160. ISBN 9781942884590. OCLC 1197085245.
  15. ^ "Exhibition: Fore". Studio Museum in Harlem. 2012. Archived from the original on 10 June 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  16. ^ "Jennifer Packer. Treading Water". Wall Street International Magazine [now Meer]. 4 September 2015. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  17. ^ "Jennifer Packer: Treading Water". ArtRabbit. 2015. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  18. ^ Fateman, Johanna (2019). "Goings on about town: Jennifer Packer". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  19. ^ Schwabsky, Barry (March 2019). "Jennifer Packer". Artforum. 67 (7). Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  20. ^ "Jennifer Packer". Whitney Museum. Archived from the original on 29 September 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  21. ^ Gryntaki, Gelly (10 June 2021). "The power of colour - The brilliant painting of Jennifer Packer". Gelly Gryntaki. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  22. ^ "Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain't Sleep". Museum of Contemporary Art. 2021. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  23. ^ D’Souza, Aruna (18 November 2021). "Jennifer Packer: Painting as an Exercise in Tenderness". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 November 2021. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  24. ^ "P.5 - Prospect New Orleans: Yesterday we said tomorrow". Ogden Museum of Southern Art. 2021. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  25. ^ "Artists: Jennifer Packer". Studio Museum in Harlem. Archived from the original on 22 January 2024. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  26. ^ "All Fellows". Fine Arts Work Center. Archived from the original on 20 December 2023. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
  27. ^ a b Daniels, Karu F. (18 February 2020). "Visual artist Jennifer Packer named recipient of 2020 Hermitage Greenfield Prize". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  28. ^ "Rome Prize Fellows | Jennifer Packer". American Academy in Rome. 2020. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
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