Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) activated the female nude with a multidisciplinary practice that spanned sixty years and included painting, assemblage, performance, and film. Originally a painter in the Abstract Expressionist tradition, Schneemann was uninterested in the masculine heroism of New York painters of the time and turned to performance-based work, primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relation to social bodies. This confrontation with power structures found further form in Schneemann’s War Mop, 1983, which focuses on the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the attack on the Palestinian Liberation Organization. In War Mop, Schneemann interrogates the “male paranoid imagination” through the rhythmic motion of the mop hitting televised images of wartime destruction. By contextualizing this kinetic sculpture alongside two dimensional works, our booth surveys points of thematic and strategic continuity throughout Schneemann’s influential six-decade career. Schneemann received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from the University of Illinois. Schneemann exhibited worldwide at institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; and the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Tate, London, UK; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, among others. Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics, curated by Lotte Johnson, was the first major exhibition since her death in 2019. Accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog, it opened at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK, in the fall of 2022. 

Working from a pool of art historical, mythological, and cultural references, Elizabeth Glaessner (b. 1984) embraces amorphousness in her subjects, who are formed in tandem with their environments through a technical process of poured pigments and pouncing brushwork. Her paintings act as portals into worlds unmoored by virtue or vice, where all manner of myths coexist unburdened by morality. In Girl with Arms, 2023, Glaessner invokes a double-entendre, conjuring a vulnerable yet confrontational allegory of painting. This female-presenting body is armed with a rudimentary weapon and is protected by the disembodied green limb of an unarticulated influence. Suffusing the subject’s face, this encroaching verdancy contrasts with the rosier, more fleshy tones of the body, suggesting a plurality of rational and irrational motivations. Glaessner was born in Palo Alto, California and grew up in Houston, Texas. After receiving her BA from Trinity University in 2006, she moved to New York and completed her MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2013. She was awarded a postgraduate fellowship at the New York Academy of Art in 2013, a residency at GlogauAIR, Berlin in 2013, and a residency at the Leipzig International Art Programme in 2012. In February 2022, P·P·O·W presented Phantom Tail, Glaessner’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Four Legs in a Garden, the first institutional solo presentation of Glaessner’s work, was on view at Le Consortium, Dijon, France, February 4 through May 2022. In November 2023, she will present a solo exhibition at Pond Society, Shanghai.  

Channeling magical naturalism in her paintings, tapestries, and sculptures, Sanam Khatibi (b. 1979) explores peace and brutality, attraction and disgust, and ultimately, life and death, as synchronous forces of innate animality. At Low Tide, 2023 harness the erotic subtext of the “Death and the Maiden” motif, a recurring theme throughout the German Renaissance. Khatibi’s figures have recently grown to mythical proportions, claiming ever more space within her Edenic, otherworldly landscapes. Her subjects are found on a remote island shared with stag beetles and translucent moths, symbols of vitality and disease. The figures’ gigantism is reinforced by these insects, as well as a still life of arcane vessels, a consistent feature throughout Khatibi’s oeuvre. Rendered in miniature, these offerings are suggestive of an unspecified ritual that is not associated with prescribed beliefs. Khatibi lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Groeninge Museum, Bruges, Belgium; Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium; Kunsthal Gent, Gent, Belgium; and P·P·O·W, New York, NY, among others. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium; Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Occitane, Sète, France; Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France; and Museum of Deinze, Deinze, Belgium, among others. She will present her second solo exhibition at P·P·O·W in May 2024. 

For Gerald Lovell (b. 1992) painting is an act of biography. Combining flat and impressionistic painting with thick daubs of impasto, Lovell’s monumental portraits depict loving scenes, refuting the notion that representations of Black figures are inherently political. Rather, his subjects are imbued with social agency and self-determinative power, while also revealing details that express their individual humanity. Referencing the history of male group portraiture, specifically that of the Northern Baroque, Untitled (Christian's Birthday), 2023 depicts a celebratory moment of Black male love in the face of bigotry, violence, and expectations of masculinity. Based on a candid photograph taken at a birthday party, the painting depicts a group of Black male friends laying together casually and joyously. A knot of limbs, expressions, and attire, the group expresses collective defiance, as well as their disregard for cultural norms and the viewer’s perception. Lovell includes himself on the periphery of the scene, affirming his belief in the resiliency of intimate Black male friendship. Gerald Lovell (b. 1992, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work can be found in prominent public and private collections including the High Museum, Atlanta, GA. He has exhibited at P·P·O·W, New York; Jeffrey Deitch, Moore Building, Miami, FL; Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland; Anthony Gallery, Chicago, IL; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC; and the Houston Museum of African American Culture, TX, among others. Lovell’s work was recently on view in What is left unspoken, Love at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. His second solo exhibition with P·P·O·W will open in January 2024.  

Known for her large-scale paintings of stylized, sentient figures, Robin F. Williams (b. 1984) employs a variety of techniques to create highly textured and complexly constructed paintings. Williams’ newest works feature protagonists from B-horror movies, a genre that consistently perpetuates fundamentalist dichotomies surrounding women’s bodies. She then augments these citations with visual effects such as VHS distortions and analog static found in filmic references. In Light in a Dark Room, 2023, Williams draws inspiration from multiple films, combining various elements to create what she refers to as a “fan fiction” painting. Echoing the composition of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith and Her Maidservant, 1623, Williams integrates references to the slasher film The Slumber Party Massacre, 1982, the erotic vampire film Daughters of Darkness, 1971, and the psychological thriller Peeping Tom, 1960. Ebbing between abstraction and figuration, Williams subverts the conventional figure-ground relationship, transforming restrictive female tropes into expanded matrices that transcend individual bodies. Williams received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has presented solo exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA; and Jack the Pelican Presents, Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions worldwide including In New York, Thinking of You (Part I), Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY; I’m Not Your Mother, P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Fire Figure Fantasy, ICA Miami, Miami, FL; Present Generations, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Bitter Nest, Galerie Perrotin, Tokyo, Japan; XENIA: Crossroads in Portrait Painting, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; Nicolas Party: Pastel, Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY; SEED, curated by Yvonne Force, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY; and more. Her work is currently in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Collection Majudia, Montreal, Canada; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; X Museum, Beijing, China; among others. This fall, Williams will present a solo exhibition with Morán Morán in Mexico City, Mexico.