SANCTUM: A solo exhibition by 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 in a solo exhibition at the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Wohlner has been included in group exhibitions at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, CA and the Angad Arts Hotel in St. Louis, MO. Jen Wohlner lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.
Sanctum is Jen Wohlner’s first solo show in St. Louis. Sanctum is an exhibition of pen and colored pencil drawings as well as ceramic sculptures. Sanctum addresses 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 figurative and fluid. Wohlner’s bright, glossy glazes create a nostalgia for vintage and mid-century vases popular in domestic decor. And her restrained use of human characteristics in the sexualized figures produce confusion about the sculptures’ gender and anatomy. Sanctum is a reflection on the unknowability and darkness of domestic, private, individual spaces.