JENNIFER WOLF UTOPALYPSE
WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY
WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY
JENNIFER WOLF UTOPALYPSE
WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY
UTOPALYPSE
William Turner Gallery is pleased to announce Utopalypse , a solo exhibition of new works by Jennifer Wolf. Utopalypse merges two seemingly opposing forces: utopia, the ideal or perfect place, and apocalypse, a moment of revelation often associated with collapse or ending. This fusion forms the conceptual core of Jennifer Wolf’s new exhibition, where the aspiration for beauty, harmony, and renewal exists alongside a deep awareness of fragility, decay, and transformation.
The works in this series live within this tension. Created with natural dyes on silk, the materials themselves embody this duality. The pigments, once used in some of the world’s earliest and most enduring artworks, carry a deep material history—rooted in ritual, craft, and reverence for the natural world. The silk, luxurious yet delicate, becomes a vessel not just for color, but for memory—shimmering with echoes of both ancient practices and personal exploration.
The process resists total control, giving space for accidents, bleeding edges, and organic movement. In this way, the paintings mirror larger ecological and emotional
truths: that what is most beautiful is often also most vulnerable. The work asks us to consider what we preserve, what we inherit, and how we carry forward the traditions of making and meaning in an increasingly unstable world.
Utopalypse doesn’t ask us to choose between hope and loss. Instead, it suggests that both exist simultaneously. In an era of synthetic saturation and environmental detachment, Utopalypse is both a reflection and a rupture: a dreamscape touched by the apocalypse of disconnection, and a gentle reclamation of the primal relationship between art, earth, and the human hand. The utopian impulse—toward wholeness, toward peace— is not extinguished by the awareness of collapse, it’s deepened by it. These works invite the viewer to feel that complexity: a moment of beauty caught in the act of becoming something else.
Wolf holds a BA in Art History from UCLA and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. A lifelong California resident, she has exhibited widely and has collaborated with William Turner Gallery since her first solo show in 2004.
Utopalypse #9, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 34” x 56.5” (two panels)
Utopalypse #4, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 48” x 48”
Dye Painting #19, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 48” x 48”
Utopalypse #1, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 48” x 48”
Utopalypse #2, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 48” x 48”
Utopalypse #5, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 36” x 36”
Utopalypse #7, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 24” x 24”
Dye Painting #16, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 46” x 34”
Utopalypse #3, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 46” x 34”
Dye Painting #15, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 46” x 34”
#8
Utopalypse
(dyptich), Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 24” x 24” (each panel)
Utopalypse #3, Natural dyes on silk and canvas on wood, 40” x 30”
JENNIFER WOLF
Jennifer Wolf grew up in Southern California hiking the Santa Ynez and Santa Monica Mountains. This intimate connection with the landscape led Wolf to explore using the earthen colors she saw around her and to learn the early painting techniques of transforming collected minerals into usable pigments. This led to a progressive innovation past simply reviving old world techniques, as she began to combine these organic minerals with state of the art acrylic mediums.
Each color is discovered through extensive exploration of the landscape and collected over many years, their processing and use subsequently recalling the artist’s personal experiences of disparate geographies. Thus the paintings become evidence of this history, each a sort of map recording not only place, but time. The mortar and pestle she employs to grind the rock transforms the laborious process into a meditation, acting as a portal to the artist’s memories as it exposes the pure color. Each strike of the pestle upon the mineral, whether it was collected from France, Peru, Santa Barbara or Santa Monica is a reminder of a specific experience
in the natural environment. Thus Wolf’s paintings explore the emotional connection that comes with discovering the land.
Sometimes the experiences are sublime as they recall both the beauty of the land and fear of the unknown. Stumbling upon a fresh kill at the mouth of a river or losing the trail at the top of a mountain, as the sun is about to set. The fear of being alone in nature, vulnerable to it’s callousness has filled the artist with an arsenal of emotions to draw from as she approaches her painting practice each day. The result is a body of work that exhibits both mystery and beauty, inviting the viewer to explore as much the painted evidence of the outer landscape as the inner landscape of the artist herself.
Wolf holds a BA in Art History from UCLA and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. A lifelong California resident, she has exhibited widely and has collaborated with William Turner Gallery since her first solo show in 2004.
JENNIFER WOLF
WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY
WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY