Practice

Jenny Halpern creates expanded paintings that investigate how the body remembers what language cannot. Working between painting, textile, and sculpture, she creates artist-constructed supports that combine paint, woven textiles, wax, resin, botanicals, and found materials into layered works that investigate sensation, transformation, and the body as a site of memory.

Born to Korean immigrant parents and raised between languages and cultures, Jenny approaches painting as a process of understanding rather than representation. Through abstraction, she explores how knowledge emerges through making, using accumulation, erosion, concealment, and repair to examine experiences that exist beyond language. Her work considers painting not as the illustration of an idea but as a way of thinking through material.

Based in Chicago, Jenny received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023 and her BA in Visual Communications Design from Purdue University. Her work has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine Vol. 53 and exhibited at Rushwoman; Yes Project Space at Zhou B Art Center; NEIU Fine Arts Center Gallery; The Art Institute of Chicago; JULIUS CAESAR; Color Club; Hyde Park Art Center; Woman Made Gallery; CNL Projects; Latin School Gallery; Heaven Gallery; Noyes Cultural Arts Center; Parlour and Ramp; Ivory Gate Gallery; MIAR Art City; and the Chicago Cultural Center.

Contact: jennyhalpern@gmail.com