Referencing Japanese Shunga, Baroque and Renaissance painting, contemporary media, and her own body, Grace Carney (b. 1992) eschews easy categorization in her practice with two self-contained bodies of work: her large-scale works on paper and her paintings. Featuring entangled limbs and contorting musculature, Carney’s drawings explore the physical experience of the human body, blurring the lines between anger and love; aggression and submission; movement and confinement. Similarly, her 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 paintings with traces of her emotional experience, burying them within the murkiness of the paint. Carney received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, in 2014, and received her 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 will open her first solo exhibition at P·P·O·W in 2024.  

Elizabeth Glaessner (b. 1984) conjures a saturated, densely layered world of transformation and multiplicity. Inviting amorphousness in her subjects and environments, Glaessner’s surreal universe is populated by evocative forms in various states of becoming or undoing. Rich with art historical and cultural allusions, her work offers no narratives or fables, but rather evokes nebulous atmospheres unmoored by virtue and vice. Working in oil, acrylic and pure pigments dispersed with water and various binders, Glaessner’s technique shifts between formal articulation and non-representational gesture. 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 third 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, from February 4 through May 22, 2022. Glaessner presented Dead Leg, her first solo exhibition at Perrotin, Paris, France, in fall 2022. Her first solo show with François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, will open in spring 2024. 

Since first exhibiting with P·P·O·W in 1986, Joe Houston (b. 1962) has distilled timely environmental and social concerns into modestly scaled paintings of commonplace objects and gestures. Executed with exacting detail and nuance, his evocative works also serve as a meditation on the precarious endeavor of painting in our time. Houston pursued undergraduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and earned his MFA from Northwestern University’s Department of Art Theory & Practice. His honors include an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell and the Bemis Foundation. Houston’s work is in numerous public collections including the Allen Memorial Arts Museum, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Progressive Collection, RISD Museum, Vehbi Koç Foundation, and Yale University Art Gallery. 

Combining sculpture, painting, performative acts, and installation, Guadalupe Maravilla (b. 1976) grounds his transdisciplinary practice in activism and healing. Engaging a wide variety of visual cultures, Maravilla’s work is autobiographical, referencing his unaccompanied, undocumented migration to the United States due to the Salvadoran Civil War. Across all media, Maravilla explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests in the body, reflecting on his own battle with cancer. Maravilla received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and his MFA from Hunter College in New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Olso, Norway; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; and the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, among others. He has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY; P·P·O·W, New York, NY; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, among others. Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago, a solo exhibition featuring a newly commissioned immersive installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston’s Watershed, was on view from May 25 - September 4, 2023. His work is currently on view in the 12th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art: forms of the surrounding futures, Gothenburg, Sweden and the 35th Bienal De São Paulo: choreographies of the impossible, São Paulo, Brazil. La Alegría del Fuego, Maravilla’s first solo exhibition with mor charpentier, is on view through November 18, 2023. 

Known for her large-scale paintings of stylized, sentient, yet ambiguously generated female figures, Robin F. Williams (b. 1984) employs a variety of techniques, including oil, airbrush, poured paint, marbling, and staining of raw canvas to create deeply textured and complexly constructed paintings. Combining a masterful technical understanding with an innate sense of curiosity, Williams fuses practices from social media channels such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube with references to early modernism, pop culture, advertising, and cinema, to challenge the systemic conventions around representations of women. 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 nationally and internationally 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. Williams’ solo exhibition, Watch Yourself, is currently on view at Morán Morán, Mexico City, Mexico through November 4.