St. Louis–based visual artist Jen Wohlner is presenting her latest solo exhibition, BINGO!, at The Sheldon’s Neidorf Family Gallery, running through August 8. Wohlner’s practice centers on abstraction, featuring a mesmerizing composition of vibrant colors, geometric forms, and notably—countless dots.
Wohlner relocated to St. Louis in 2019 with her wife, native St. Louisan Jill Wohlner. Since arriving, she has exhibited in nearly 20 shows across five years. Her connection with The Sheldon began after curator and gallery director Paula Lincoln attended her January 2025 exhibition at Wildfruit Projects and subsequently extended an invitation, materializing a year later.
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“This marks my first institutional exhibition at The Sheldon,” Wohlner notes. “The experience of collaborating with them has been truly exceptional.”
Created with simple materials including pen, colored pencil, and ink, the pieces exist exclusively on paper and vary dramatically in scale—from standard printer paper dimensions to impressively large works that immediately capture and maintain viewer attention. Wohlner chose to display the works unframed at The Sheldon, emphasizing the unpretentious quality of her materials.
“You genuinely recognize that this is a drawing on paper,” she explains. “And that feels remarkable. There’s something engaging about presenting these unframed…visitors get space to contemplate those intricate details.”
Wohlner’s choice of basic materials makes her primarily abstract work more approachable. “Perhaps they notice the everyday materials: just pen, ink, and colored pencil, which they understand,” she says. “Even if they’re not grasping every aspect of my personal narrative with all its intricacies, they can still connect with the drawing in their own meaningful way.”
Wohlner’s background as a software engineer for over a decade provided her the financial stability to develop her artistic voice independently, without relying on commercial success. This technical background significantly shapes how she builds the underlying systems in her work.
“In software engineering, when constructing a large system [with] hundreds of developers contributing, individual team members don’t necessarily understand every component,” Wohlner explains. “Each person may work on just one layer of the system, which simply needs to function correctly. Others will build on that foundation without needing complete knowledge—they just need it to operate reliably.”
Wohlner applies this principle to her art by developing underlying systems that may only exist in her mind, yet remain comprehensible to viewers at a more surface level. “The audience gets a sense of it, and that suffices,” she notes. Her viewers can therefore bring their individual interpretations to the pieces.
Wohlner’s pieces encourage participation from an engaged audience, something she values during her creative process as well. “Partway through production, I’ll check with my neighbor…or video call my wife and ask ‘What do you see in this drawing? How does it work?'” she explains. “This isn’t comparable to writing a personal diary. This is intentionally public art with an audience in mind.”
LGBTQ+ identity forms another essential component of Wohlner’s practice. Drawing inspiration from theorists Johanna Drucker and Ferdinand de Saussure, Wohlner practices “queering memoir”—blending intensely personal, experiential content with a challenge to traditional memoir conventions.
“For me, this involves exploring queer kinship,” she states. “And perhaps dismantling certain conventions and either/or categories associated with what family represents.”
Wohlner employs color strategically throughout her compositions, while clouded areas filled with grayscale dots—seemingly random yet ultimately organizing—unify the works. These intricate dot-filled clouds, containing thousands of minute marks, feel unbounded, flowing through the pronounced geometric forms positioned in the composition’s center. Wohlner describes her meticulous dotting process as requiring endurance.
“The experience parallels endurance athletics,” she explains. “I’m satisfied spending entire studio sessions filling space with a single shade of purple. There’s something gratifying about dedicating myself to completing a section through one consistent mark. The results consistently surprise and inspire me.”
The exhibition title, BINGO!, reflects the happiness she notices in viewers upon experiencing moments of insight about the work.
“These breakthrough moments happen when viewing the drawings,” she notes, “Those ‘aha!‘ instances of ‘oh wow, that’s the technique used‘ or ‘wait, this negative space is actually prominent in the composition.‘”
Ultimately, Wohlner’s exhibition embodies her personal narrative, merging meticulous attention to detail and basic materials into a show that will intrigue viewers and leave each person with a distinct, memorable experience.
The exhibition is free and open Wednesdays–Fridays from 12–5 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m.–3 p.m. at The Sheldon Galleries. An artist presentation is scheduled for July 25 at 1 p.m.
