Since her residency at the Kohler Arts Center in 1991, Ann Agee (b. 1959) has focused her practice on replicating objects by hand, a process employed to simulate mass production and engage ambiguous delineations between fine art, design, and craft; histories of cultural appropriation and exchange; and the range of women’s lived experiences. Agee is a leading member in a pioneering generation of feminist ceramicists who have brought the art form to the forefront of contemporary discourses as sculpture. She earned her BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 1981 and her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1986. Her work has been included in notable group exhibitions, including: 1994’s Bad Girls, the New Museum, NY; 2009’s Dirt on Delight, the Institute of Contemporary Art, PA and the Walker Art Center, MN; and 2008’s Conversations in Clay, the Katonah Art Museum, NY. This year, she was honored with Cooper Union’s Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award, previously having received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, among others. Her works are included in the permanent collection of notable institutions including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; the RISD Art Museum, RI; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Henry Art Museum in Seattle, WA; the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, FL. Agee’s work was exhibited as part of To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA and in manifesto of fragility, the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France. Her legacy with Kohler Arts Center will continue to expand with her work featured in the upcoming group show Lunch Break: Arts/Industry in Between, opening in June 2024. She will have a solo exhibition at the Currier Museum, Manchester, NH in February 2025.

Referencing Baroque and Renaissance painting, literature, daily life, and her own body, Grace Carney (b. 1992) eschews easy categorization in paintings which hover between abstraction and the possibility of figurative forms. Blurring the lines between anger and love; aggression and submission; movement and confinement, Carney’s gestural oil paintings reflect an underlying interest in liminal spaces, embracing the ambiguity and messiness of the paint itself. Wrestling with distinct personal narratives and relationships, Carney imbues the manifold layers of her densely worked surfaces with traces of her emotional experience, burying them within the murkiness of the paint. Born in Minnesota, Carney received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, in 2014, and MFA in Painting from the New York Studio School, New York, NY, in 2022. Carney was awarded the Jane C. Carrol Scholarship in 2020-2022 and the Hohenberg Travel Grant in 2022. Her work has been exhibited in I’m Not Your Mother at P·P·O·W, New York, NY, and Three Women: Grace Carney, Jeane Cohen, Abigail Dudley at Steven Harvey Fine Arts Projects, New York, NY. Wrestle, her first solo exhibition in Europe, was on view at Beacon Gallery, Munich, Germany, in the winter of 2022. Carney has recently been featured in Galerie Magazine and W Magazine, among others. Carney presented her largest canvases to date in girlgirlgirl, her first solo exhibition with P·P·O·W in January 2024. 

In his luminous and emotionally complex paintings, Kyle Dunn (b. 1990) depicts scenes of isolation and romantic connection in a modern world where the barrier between public and private life is increasingly porous. The composite figures in his work are often caught in moments of solitude or interior self-reflection, offering at first glance scenes of domestic intimacy. Dueling elements of the theatrical and the mundane complicate the lines separating perception and projection. The emotional tenor of the scenes is heightened by a pervasive liquid eroticism and theatrical lighting, only to be undercut with moments of careful observation and quiet humor. Dunn’s work mines the tension created between this cinematic drama and personal introspection to explore the fraught relationship between artist and subject, between one lover and another, and between individual and society. Dunn lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and received his BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD. His work has been included in exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Marlborough Gallery, London, UK; GRIMM, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Maria Bernheim, Zurich, Switzerland; and Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany; among others. His work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; the Sunpride Foundation, Kowloon, Hong Kong; and X Museum, Beijing, China. In 2022, his work was exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, in Fire Figure Fantasy: Selections from ICA Miami’s Collection. Dunn has been featured in various publications including The New York Times, AnOther Magazine, W Magazine, and Juxtapoz among others.  Dunn’s first institutional solo exhibition, Kyle Dunn / MATRIX 194, at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, runs from June 7 to September 1, 2024. His first solo exhibition with Vielmetter Los Angeles, CA, will open in spring 2025.   

In her meticulously rendered small-scale paintings, Hilary Harkness (b. 1971) fuses traditional techniques with a distinctly contemporary sensibility to explore power struggles inherent in sex, race, and class systems on an uncensored stage. Working in episodic series that take years to complete, Harkness wields unparalleled skill and imagination to elevate the stories and intersectional experiences of women, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ people. Harkness earned her BA from UC Berkeley and her MFA from Yale University. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain; American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; and Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; among others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Yuz Museum Shanghai; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA; and the Seavest Collection, New York, NY; among others. In 2017, she received the Henry Clews Award and participated in the inaugural Master Residency Program at the Château de La Napoule, France. She has lectured widely at leading academic and cultural institutions. In 2014, she co-curated Roy Lichtenstein: Nudes and Interiors at FLAG Art Foundation. Harkness’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Prisoners from the Front, was on display in fall 2023. Harkness’ ambition that her “works create a greater sense of belonging for folks across the spectrum” has been recognized in group exhibitions such as 2023’s Framing the Female Gaze: Women Artists and the New Historicism at Lehman College Art Gallery, New York, NY and I’ll be Your Mirror – Reflections of the Contemporary Queer at Mighty Real / Queer Detroit, Detroit, MI. Co-published by Black Dog Press and P·P·O·W, Hilary Harkness: Everything for You is the first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s work and features new texts by Lynn Tillman, Dr. Ashley Jackson, as well as an interview with American painter Ivy Haldeman.

Working in photography, film, and installation, Dinh Q. Lê (1968-2024) presented little-known narratives of war and migration from the perspective of the global Vietnamese diaspora. Synthesizing his own memory and perception with popular depictions in entertainment and journalism from Western and Eastern cultures, Lê’s singular voice reframed global histories of Southern Vietnam, challenging censorship, exploitation, and propaganda from all sides. Lê was born in Ha Tien, a Vietnamese town near the Cambodia border. Soon after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978, the Lê family immigrated to Los Angeles. After receiving a BFA from UC Santa Barbara, Lê began his first photo-weavings using a traditional technique he learned from his aunt. Lê participated in the 2013 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the 2009 Biennale Cuveê, OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria; the 2008 Singapore Biennale, Singapore; and the 2006 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia. His work has been exhibited at major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; MoMA PS1, New York, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Tufts University Art Gallery, MA; and the Asia Society, NY; among many others. In 2010, he was awarded the Prince Claus Award for his outstanding contribution to cultural exchange. P·P·O·W has represented Lê since 1998, presenting seven solo exhibitions before his sudden passing in April 2024. Devoted to asserting his own cultural history through his artistic practice, Lê established the nonprofit contemporary art space Sàn Art, leaving behind space for future generations to engage in their own pursuit of reclamation. In The Art Newspaper, Christopher Moore noted that “Dinh was an uncle to everyone in the Vietnamese art scene, young or old, local or foreigner, mentor to many.” In 2022, Lê was the subject of the exhibition The thread of memory and other photographs, musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris, France, and was featured in Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia, which was on view at the National Gallery Singapore through August 2023. He will be featured in Legacies: The Asian American Art Movement on the East Coast (1969-2001)  at NYU’s 80WSE Gallery in fall 2024. 

In his multidisciplinary practice, Carlos Motta (b. 1978) documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities to challenge normative discourses through visibility and representation. As a historian of untold narratives and an archivist of repressed histories, Motta is committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia. Motta received his MFA from Bard College and completed the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2006. He has received grants from Arts Impact Initiative x Creative Time, 2023; Art Matters, 2008; NYSCA, 2010; the Creative Capital Foundation, 2012; and the Kindle Project, 2012. His work has been the subject of survey exhibitions including Carlos Motta: Formas de libertad at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia in 2017, which traveled to Matucana100, Santiago, Chile in 2018, and Carlos Motta: For Democracy There Must Be Love, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2015. Motta debuted his first multichannel sound installation at his 2022 solo survey exhibition Your Monsters, Our Idols at the Wexner Center of the Arts, Columbus, OH. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; and Museo de Arte de Banco de la República, Bogotá, Columbia; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; among others. In 2019, Motta was appointed tenure-track Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Pratt Institute’s Fine Arts Department. Carlos Motta: History’s Backrooms, a 20-year career monograph, was published by SKIRA in June 2020. In the fall of 2023, Motta presented Jjagɨyɨ: Air of Life at P·P·O·W in collaboration with Elio Miraña, ELO, Gil Farekatde Maribba, Higinio Bautista, Kiyedekago, Rosita, and Yoí nanegü, marking his third show with the gallery. His work is currently part of Marco Scotini’s Disobedience Archive at the sixtieth Venice Biennale. Next year, he will be the subject of a mid-career survey exhibition at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain. 

David Wojnarowicz (1954 -1992) was among the most incisive and prolific American artists of the 1980s and 90s. Wojnarowicz’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The American Center, Paris, France; The Busan Museum of Modern Art, Korea; Centro Galego de Art Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; The Barbican Art Gallery, London; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. His work is in permanent collections of major museums nationally and internationally and his life and work have been the subject of significant scholarly studies including Cynthia Carr’s Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz (2012), winner of a Lambda Literary Award for “Gay Memoir/Biography’’ and finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize awarded by Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. Wojnarowicz has had retrospectives at the galleries of the Illinois State University, curated by Barry Blinderman, 1990, and at the New Museum, curated by Dan Cameron, 1999. A third retrospective, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, co-curated by David Kiehl and David Breslin, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in July 2018. The widely acclaimed exhibition traveled to the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid in May 2019, and the Musee d/Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City in November 2019. A concurrent exhibition of Wojnarowicz’s films and photographs opened at the KW Berlin in 2019. Wojnarowicz: Fuck You Faggot Fucker, a comprehensive feature-length documentary directed by Chris McKim, premiered in November 2020 and was named one of 2021’s best documentaries by Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Esquire, and IndieWire, among others. In 2022, the solo exhibition Dear Jean Pierre: The David Wojnarowicz Correspondence with Jean Pierre Delage, 1979-1982 at P·P·O·W unveiled an archive of letters, drawings, and photographs from Wojnarowicz’s early career, followed by the release of a catalogue published by Primary Information in 2023. This year, amid the seventieth anniversary of his birth, his work will be featured in group shows at Saar Historical Museum, Saarbrücken, Germany and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA.