Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing

Oct 30, 2021–Apr 17, 2022

A seemingly melancholy man is sitting down and looking downward off in the distance.
A seemingly melancholy man is sitting down and looking downward off in the distance.

Jennifer Packer, The Body Has Memory, 2018. Oil on canvas, 60 × 48 in. (152.4 × 121.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; promised gift of Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins. © Jennifer Packer. Photograph by Jason Wyche. Image courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, and Corvi-Mora, London

Jennifer Packer’s paintings and drawings combine observation, memory, and improvisation. Featuring over thirty works from the past decade, The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing is the largest survey of Packer’s practice to date. Her intimate renderings of friends, family, and flowers evoke the art historical genres of portraiture and still life, while also highlighting the politics of representation.

Her paintings, most recently seen at the Whitney in the 2019 Biennial, slide between the fidelity of depiction and the freedom of abstraction. This avowal of both clarity and opacity endows her paintings with the same complexity she sees in the Black sitters that populate her art—and the world. “My inclination to paint,” Packer has said, “especially from life, is a completely political one. We belong here. We deserve to be seen and acknowledged in real time. We deserve to be heard and to be imaged with shameless generosity and accuracy.”

Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing was initiated by Serpentine and curated by Melissa Blanchflower, Curator, Exhibitions and Public Art with Natalia Grabowska, Assistant Curator. The presentation at the Whitney is organized by Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator, and Jane Panetta, Nancy and Fred Poses Curator and Director of the Collection, with Ambika Trasi, Curatorial Assistant.

The lead sponsor for Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing is the Jerome L. Greene Foundation.

This exhibition is also sponsored by 

Generous support is provided by Judy Hart Angelo. 

Significant support is provided by Candy and Michael Barasch, Further Forward Foundation, and Dawn and David Lenhardt.  

Additional support is provided by Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi and Jackson Tang. 

Jennifer Packer and Hans Ulrich Obrist Discuss the Meaning and Method of Painting Today

What can a painting suggest about a meaningful life? On the occasion of Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, Hans Ulrich Obrist talks with Jennifer Packer to find out.

Read this interview extract in Cultured Magazine.

Read the full interview in the exhibition catalogue.

Two figures, one standing and one seated, in a pink room with plants, artwork, and furniture subtly emerging from the painterly background.
Two figures, one standing and one seated, in a pink room with plants, artwork, and furniture subtly emerging from the painterly background.

Jennifer Packer, A Lesson in Longing, 2019. Oil on canvas, 108 1/2 × 137 in. (275.6 × 348 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; promised gift of Dawn and David Lenhardt. © Jennifer Packer. Photograph by Ron Amstutz. Image courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, and Corvi-Mora, London

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On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

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