Elisa Jensen, John Lees, and Liam Torres-Murphy

TO THE STUDIO

January 22 through February 21, 2026

Opening Reception

Wednesday, January 28, from 6–8 pm

Gallery hours:

Thursday–Saturday, 12–6 PM.

Location

53 Stanton Street

New York, NY 10002

608.556.4763

Press Release

JJ MURPHY GALLERY is excited to present “To the Studio,” a three-person exhibition of paintings by Elisa Jensen, John Lees, and Liam Murphy-Torres. The show, which explores the work of three generations of artists associated with the New York Studio School, runs from January 22 to February 21, 2026. The opening reception will be held on Wednesday, January 28, from 6 to 8 PM. Gallery hours are Thursday–Saturday, 12–6 PM.

The title of the exhibition was suggested by Elisa Jensen. It refers to a series of paintings by the German-born British artist Frank Auerbach (1931–2024), entitled “To the Studios,” which explored the view down a hill at three artist studios. The title is also a reference to the famed New York Studio School, the alternative art school founded in 1963 by Mercedes Matter, which links all three artists. The initial curriculum consisted of extended drawing and painting sessions. As Jensen observes, "Working from life was the touchstone.”

That’s certainly true in the case of Jensen’s paintings, which reflect the world around her, whether it is her daughter sitting on a couch in front of a window, her husband writing on a bed, or the view of tree branches out a window. Matisse talked about being conscious of expressing himself “through light or rather in light.” All of Jensen’s paintings deal with what could be termed "the poetics of light" and its importance in rendering the atmosphere of a scene. She is interested in capturing the way sunlight creates shadows on the wall in “Dusk Clock” (2025) or filters through lace curtains in “Lace Curtain, Playing Cards” (2025). Jensen employs backlighting in “Oona and Curtain” (2025), so that our eyes are drawn to the colors created by the illuminated background, while the features of the young woman are partially obscured by shadow. “Mette’s Window, Møn” highlights the difference between outdoors and indoors, between natural and incandescent light.

One has to admire an artist who works on a single painting for over 30 years. Many of John Lees’s works have been reworked over long periods of time. He told Jennifer Samet in 2022, “If I can finish a painting that began in 1986 and it turns out to be a better painting, it’s like I’ve time traveled and justified the time spent.” “Couple (Winter)” (2020), “Trio” (2017), and “Still Life” (2015) are exceptions. “Profile (Sandy),” 2013–19, has undergone several different iterations, which indicates that Lees considers the painting to be in a state of flux. In a review of a previous show in Hyperallergic, John Yau suggests that Lees’s intention is to arrest time: “By repeatedly returning to the same motif, and by building up as well as sanding down the painting’s surface, Lees attempts the impossible, which is to freeze a particular object, individual, or moment in time.” Yet there is something very filmic about Lees's emphasis on the materiality of a painting. The layers of crusted paint that accrue on the surface over time, such as in “Old Painter” (2007–10) and “Profile (Sandy),” add a level of abstraction to the image, making a viewer wonder what the paintings were like initially or how they have changed over time in the process of their making.

The paintings of Liam Murphy-Torres also take a considerable amount of time, often many months, despite not incorporating the same thick buildup of paint on the surface that Lees creates. “Marlboro Man” (2021–2025) began as a self-portrait while the artist was still an undergraduate. Murphy-Torres is very much a process-oriented painter who works on multiple paintings at the same time. He will often resort to digital manipulation to experiment with possible changes, notably color, which has infinite possibilities. It takes Murphy-Torres a long time before he feels that he’s managed to get a painting just right. In terms of influences—the artist would no doubt cite Matisse—yet one might think of Bay Area painters such as David Park, Elmer Bishoff, or Richard Diebenkorn. Murphy-Torres makes portraits and cityscapes. He often portrays urban scenes: subways, playgrounds, children playing, people walking dogs, and various street scenes. In “Waiting for the C. Thirty Fourth Street” (2025), the woman in the foreground, who wears a green head scarf, is the only figure with a detailed face. Yet it’s her pose, her body language, and her physical gesture—the way her body moves in space on the subway platform—that energize the picture plane.

Elisa Jensen has had solo and two-person exhibitions at Various Small Fires, LA; Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY; Isabel Sullivan Gallery; Ed Thorp Gallery, NY; John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY; Royal Danish Consulate General, NYC; and Morsø Kunstforening, Denmark. She has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Academy Museum, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has been reviewed in Two Coats of Paint, Whitehot Magazine, Hyperallergic, and The New York Times. Jensen received a BA from Smith College and a certificate in painting from the New York Studio School. She currently teaches at the New York Studio School and Pratt Institute. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

John Lees has had numerous solo exhibitions at Betty Cuningham Gallery, NYC. He is the recipient of awards and grants, including from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His work can be found in major public institutions, most notably the Detroit Institute of Art, MI; the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; the Kemper Collection, Kansas City, MO; the Museum of Modern Art; and the New Museum, New York City. Lees received his BFA and MFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, CA, and has been an instructor at the New York Studio School since 1988. The artist lives and works in upstate New York.

Liam Murphy-Torres has had a pop-up solo exhibition at Francis Cook Gallery in Berlin, Germany, in 2025. His work has appeared in several group exhibitions, including the Bowery Gallery and Blue Mountain Gallery, NYC. He received his BFA degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, in 2022. Murphy-Torres is currently completing his MFA degree at the New York Studio School.