Bio
Jenny Sharaf is a multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles, and has lived and worked in San Francisco for more than a decade. Her paintings, installations, murals, videos, and happenings celebrate process and the artist's intuition, while reflecting on art history, counterculture, feminism, formalism and the rhetoric of abstraction. Sharaf earned her MFA from Mills College.
Her saturated color palettes feel referential to art history and pop culture, yet are uniquely her own. Often they stand alone as vivid, psychedelic acrylic paint passages swirling across large canvases or applied directly to walls to create large, immersive fields of color. Other times they fall over magazine images from the 1960 and 70s to explore the history behind California’s sorted female mystique; or applied to grand landscape images provoke a sense of nostalgia for a time we never knew was so deeply grounded in this altered terrain, deepening and bringing light to what being a California artist means.
Sharaf's process is instinctual, spiritual and meditative. She only paints when she is in the perfect mood, when the light is just right, and she is operating in a flow state. She believes that any energy around the work is fully absorbed into the paint and canvas, serving as the ultimate record of experience, play, vibration and mediation. Sharaf's recent large scale paintings on tightly stretched fields of color are nuanced, uplifting, and transcendent.
In recent work, Sharaf explores the intersection of fashion and art as they relate to the fast-paced seasons, international calendars and global cultural trends. Predicting and following trends in the fashion world, creating color palettes that echo a seasonal approach, the surfaces serve as a backdrop to loud splashes of color. There is a tension between homogenization and expression, femininity and materiality, depth and superficiality.
Sharaf’s work is in the collections of Jan Koum, Google, Rachel Zoe, Yoko Ono, Capital One and many more. She is currently working on a series of new paintings to exhibit in Paris early next year, putting together an upcoming NFT release, and is keeping busy with a budding ceramics practice with her partner and fellow artist, John Duket.
Solo Exhibitions
2021 Side Hug, Haw Contemporary Crossroads, Kansas City, MO
2019 Flow State, Haw Contemporary Crossroads, Kansas City, MO (details)
2019 Gallery Grand Opening, WIP Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon *Coming Soon
2019 California Promises, Air Project Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
2018 Painted Portals Exhibition, Portal Point, Tokyo, Japan
2017 Featured Artist / Painted Chevrolet, Headlands Art Center, San Francisco, CA
2017 Solo Exhibition, Pre-Fall at Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Mural and Pop-Up Exhibition, Freda Salvador Flagship Store, San Francisco, CA
2016 CA Girl in Tokyo, Portal Point, Tokyo, Japan
2016 New Paintings @ The Shipping Container Project, Parking Lot Art Fair, San Francisco, CA
2016 Mural and Installations for Desert Gold & Coachella Events, The Ace Hotel & Swim Club, Palm Springs, CA
2016 Site-Specific Triptych for Google, Google HQ, San Francisco, CA
2016 Installation with Charles de Lisle and Cultured Magazine, FOG Art & Design, San Francisco, CA
2016 Site-Specific Mural and Installation, Capital One SF Offices, San Francisco, CA
2015 New Work by Jenny Sharaf, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2015 For Your Love: A Solo Show, TW Fine Art, Brisbane, Australia
2014 Designed Identity, CES Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA
2013 Femme-Gestures: New Paintings, Henry Hudson Studios, Hudson, NY
2013 Blonde Ambition: A Solo Show, Backstock Gallery, Oakland, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2019 CHROMA, WIP Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2019 Dallas Art Fair, Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2019 Selected Contemporary Paintings and Works on Paper, Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2019 Annual Live Auction, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA
2018 Nordic Group Show, Heron Arts Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Plant Show, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 Group Display at FOG, Park Life, San Francisco, CA
2017 2nd Annual Art Show for SF Skate Club, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 What's Your Name / Who's Your Daddy?, The Ace Hotel & Swim Club, Palm Springs, CA
2017 Women's Day Fundraiser for Oasis Girls, Three Eight, San Francisco, CA
2017 Spectral Hues, Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, CA
2016 Luggage Store & Adobe Books Annual Auction, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Her Room, Junior High Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2016 I Look For Clues in Your Dreams, curated by Heather Marx, Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA
2016 Between The Lines, curated by Rom Levy, The Mine Gallery, Al Quoz District, Dubai
2016 Local II: A Group Show, Mirus Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Welcome to the Left Coast, curated by Andres Guerrero and Matt Gonzalez, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Hawaii Swim 5.0, New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2016 springsummer, The Battery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Locals Only Show, RVCA, San Francisco, CA
2016 Going Green, Rule Gallery, Denver, CO
2016 Miscellaneous Press Edition Launch, Art Bandini Art Fair & LAABF, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Ratio 3, Barry McGee L. Quan Healing Arts Centre, San Francisco, CA
2015 Gatherings and Conversations, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2015 Tomorrow, Hashimoto Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2015 Art Night SF, UN Plaza, San Francisco, CA
2015 Babe Decor 'as part of the Triennial', New Museum, New York, NY
2015 The 4%s, Fecal Face Dot Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2015 Coasting, Gerson Zevi Gallery, Hamptons, NY
2015 On Silent Haunches, Fecal Face Dot Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2015 Swim 1, New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Younger Than George, George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2015 Bitch, Please, N.B.D. Projects, San Francisco, CA
2015 Parking Lot Art Fair, Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA
2015 Super Contemporary, Creativity Explored, San Francisco, CA
2015 The Duck Show, Minotaur Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Unicef Fundraiser, Tappan Collective, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Group Show, Left Field, San Luis Obispo, CA
2015 SOEX Annual Auction, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA
2015 Art Auction to Benefit Artists, curated by Matt Gonzales, Incline Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2015 Tappan Collective Pop-up, SOHO House, Los Angeles, CA
2014 Herradura Barrel Pop-Up, Public Works, San Francisco, CA
2014 Coach Art Non-Profit, Adler and Co. Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2014 Anniversary Show, Backstock Gallery, Oakland, CA
2014 Burst, CES Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA
2014 Mas Attack, Studio 17, San Francisco, CA
2013 This Will Never Work, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA
2013 Image Search, Google Headquarters, Mountain View, CA
2013 Holiday Pop-Up, Park Life, San Francisco, CA
2013 Absolut Open Canvas, Divisadero St., San Francisco, CA
2013 Surface, CES Contemporary, Laguna Beach, CA
2013 Future Tense, CES Contemporary, Laguna Beach, CA
2013 MFA THESIS SHOW, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA
2013 Art Auction to Benefit The Artists, Incline Gallery, San Francisco, CA Free Gallery, Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA
2012 An Art Auction, MacArthur B Arthur, Oakland, CA
2012 Film and Video Screenings, The Lab, San Francisco, CA
2012 Spookfest Film Festival with Mike Kuchar
2012 A.T.O. (A Temporary Offering), San Francisco, CA
2012 Beauty Curated by Glen Helfand and Katrina Traywick, Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA
2012 Rio Grande Installation, A.T.O. (A Temporary Offering), San Francisco, CA
2012 Fortnight, Royal Nonesuch Gallery, Oakland, CA
Projects
2018 Site-Specific Mural and Artist in Residence, Google HQ, Mountain View, CA
2018 Site-Specific Installation, Bonobos, Walnut Creek, CA
2018 Site-Specific Installation, Vans HQ, Costa Mesa, CA
2018 Site-Specific Installation for Cultured Magazine, FOG, San Francisco, CA
2016 Installation and Art Direction for La Pac Summer Soire, La Pac HQ, Paris, France
2016 Live Projection Performance with KOAK, Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA