Jonah Reenders - Visual Narratives

Artist:  Jonah Reenders
Title:   Untitled (Cave Entrance), 2025
Size: Approx.14 x 11"
Print Type:  Gelatin silver print from large format, 8x10 film
Price: $750

ABOUT THE WORK

(This piece is one of four from Jonah that is currently being exhibited in the PCNW gallery as part of our 27th juried exhibition, Visual Narratives. On view until December 14, 2025.)

"Armillaria" investigates the Armillaria ostoyae, the world’s largest living organism, a 10,000-year-old fungus spanning three square miles and weighing 35,000 tons. Through constructed narratives and psychic landscapes, the project examines our entanglement with vast ecological networks and queer ecology.

In summer 2024, I visited the organism with a mycologist that has been studying it for decades. I brought back a fragment of the 10,000 year old mycelium to grow in my studio. I photographed its slow growth and created spore prints in the darkroom. Sitting next to this ancient organism prompted me to reflect on individuality, with its ability to separate, yet always return as one. I began to wonder what it means to be an individual, or to claim a body as our own, when we are already a host of countless lives. The images evoke the uncertainty of the natural world, inviting us to question what we know and use fungi as a lens to reflect on the larger systems we inhabit.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jonah Reenders
San Francisco, CA
b.1993

Artist CV
Shows
2025. Galerie Teleport, Prague, CZ. “Armillaria” Solo Show
2025. SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA. “FORECAST 2025”
2025. Wattis Institute, San Francisco, CA. “CCA MFA Thesis 2025”
2025. Novack Gallery, San Francisco, CA. “Barclay Simpson MFA Award Exhibition”
2025. Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. “TEPHRA/
Garden of Fireflies” Solo Show
2024. SOMArts, San Francisco, CA. “2024 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art
Awards Exhibitions”
2024. SFO Museum, San Francisco, CA. “Here and Home”
2024. Gallery 16, San Francisco, CA. “In Search of Wisdom’s Gold”
2024. Leica Gallery, San Francisco, CA. “Onward”
2024. Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. “Fool’s Gold”
2024. House on Haight, San Francisco, CA. “No Context”
2024. Casemore Gallery, San Francisco, CA. “Mane N Tail”
2024. The Image Flow Photography Center, San Rafael, CA. “Queer Consciousness”

Awards
2025. Headlands Graduate Fellowship Recipient
2024. Barclay Simpson Master of Fine Arts Award Recipient
2024. Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award Recipient

Education
2025. MFA, California College of the Arts
2022. Intimacy and the Photographic Portrait, Ryan Pfluger, Anderson Arts Ranch
2016. BS, Environmental Science, Northern Michigan University