Guy Hepner Gallery

Jesse Morsberger World 5-6 For Sale

Jesse Morsberger
Jesse Morsberger - World 5-6, 2025, Oil on canvas

World 5-6, 2025

Oil on canvas

24 x 20 inches

About this work

Jesse Morsberger has established himself as a distinctive voice in contemporary figurative painting, earning recognition for his ability to merge classical oil painting techniques with imagery drawn from digital culture and video game aesthetics. His work occupies a compelling position at the intersection of nostalgia and critical commentary, appealing to collectors who value both technical proficiency and conceptual depth. World 5-6 exemplifies Morsberger's ongoing exploration of pixelated landscapes and retro gaming environments rendered through the traditional medium of oil on canvas. The title itself references the level-naming conventions of early platform games, immediately situating the viewer within a framework of digital memory and childhood experience. The artist translates the flat, geometric architecture of 8-bit and 16-bit worlds into richly textured passages of paint, creating a tension between the source material's inherent artificiality and the organic materiality of oil pigment. This interplay invites meditation on how we construct meaning from virtual spaces and how these environments have become embedded in collective cultural consciousness. At 24 by 20 inches, the work maintains an intimate scale that encourages close looking, rewarding the viewer with subtle variations in brushwork and color temperature that would be impossible in the digital originals. Morsberger's handling of light and atmosphere elevates what might initially appear as simple subject matter into something quietly profound, questioning the boundaries between high and low culture, between the handmade and the programmed. For acquisition inquiries regarding World 5-6 or other available works by Jesse Morsberger, please contact Guy Hepner directly.

Price on Application

Sell or Consign

Edition & Provenance

Year
2025
Medium
Oil on canvas

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About the Paintings Series

Jesse Morsberger paints in oil on canvas, translating imagery from video games, anime, and early internet culture — the visual world of a generation raised alongside them — into the slow, physical language of traditional painting.

The Series

This body of work moves between two registers: intimate figurative portraits (DBZ Shirt, Dante, Red Version) and painted reconstructions of gaming environments and interfaces (World 5-6, Hyrule Field, Dual Screen). In both cases, Morsberger renders subjects sourced from screens — anime-branded clothing, platform-game level design, retro console landscapes — with the tonal control and built-up surface of classical oil technique, so that digital source material takes on the weight and permanence of the painted object.

Morsberger's stated interest is not technology as symbol but as emotional marker: glowing monitors, consoles, and the ordinary domestic spaces around them appear throughout his practice as carriers of personal and collective memory rather than commentary on digital culture itself. Works typically develop over months, allowing the paint surface to accumulate a rough, lived-in quality that sits between image and artifact.

Acquire Works by Jesse Morsberger

Guy Hepner offers current works from this series. Contact our New York team to discuss availability, pricing, and additional pieces by the artist.

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World 5-6

About Jesse Morsberger

Jesse Morsberger (b. 1994, NYC) is a Brooklyn-based painter whose work explores the intersection of memory, technology, and everyday life through the lens of a generation raised alongside video games, anime, and the early internet. His paintings examine how these digital spaces shaped identity, friendship, and our understanding of the world, and what it means to carry those experiences into adulthood.

Working primarily in oil, Morsberger translates imagery associated with contemporary digital culture into the slow, tactile language of painting. Glowing monitors, game consoles, and ordinary domestic spaces frequently appear throughout his work, not as symbols of technology itself, but as emotional markers embedded within personal and collective memory.

His paintings often develop over months, using a direct, physical approach that allows the surface to accumulate a rough, lived-in quality. The resulting works exist somewhere between image and artifact, preserving fleeting moments while emphasizing the material presence of paint itself. By reconstructing experiences that exist between physical and virtual worlds, Morsberger's work creates a visual record of a generation whose lives have always been shaped by both.

Morsberger received his BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2016. He was awarded a fellowship at Vermont Studio Center in 2020 and has participated in residencies at MeMeraki (2023) and The Moosey Residency (2026). His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions with Nicodim Gallery, Kravets Wehby, Andrea Festa, and JJ Murphy, and in the solo exhibitions Paradigm Shift at Taymour Grahne Projects (2023) and Crossplay at Cova Gallery (2024).

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