In quietly charged, often domestic scenes, Aaron Gilbert (b. 1979) unearths the complex emotional terrain in the presence of societal crisis. Collapsing time with influences ranging from Early Renaissance painters such as Fra Angelico and magical realists such as Frida Kahlo, to Persian and Indian miniature painting, Gilbert creates deeply personal, poetic, and often political paintings that convey a complex contemporary experience. Gilbert’s meticulously worked and reworked compositions are set against a backdrop of empirically American wreckage and unbridled technological acceleration. Distilling meaning and love amid an age of mass incarceration and unchecked surveillance, Gilbert offers us one vision of the world in order to usher in the possibility of new ones. Gilbert earned his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University. His work has been exhibited at Lyles and King, Lulu, and Deitch Projects, and galleries internationally. His work is currently in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In a cross-generational exhibition, P·P·O·W will present new works by Aaron Gilbert in conversation with Martin Wong’s paintings in the fall of 2020.

Fusing the corporeal, decorative, historical and functional, Clementine Keith-Roach (b. 1984) creates detailed and uncanny sculptures that blur the boundaries between object and body, skin and worked surface. While pregnant with her first child, Keith-Roach became fascinated by her rapidly changing body and began taking plaster casts of her own breasts, later molding these casts onto large terracotta vessels sourced from Turkey or Greece. The resulting works anthropomorphize pottery to simultaneously celebrate the female form and breathe life into the storied history of domestic objects. Keith-Roach received as BA in Art History from Bristol University. She has recently exhibited at Ben Hunter Gallery, London; MOCA, Los Angeles; Blue Projects, London; Centre Regional D’art Contemporain (CRAC), France; The Villa Lontana, Rome, Open Space Contemporary, London and Pervilion, Palermo and London. Keith-Roach curated the group exhibition Interiority at Ben Hunter Gallery in 2018. She is also an editor of Effects, a journal of art, poetry and essays.

Katharine Kuharic (b. 1962) uses a highly keyed pallet and meticulous, multi-layered compositions to create sensual and alluring scenes. Well known for images depicting American life and culture, her newest series takes a more contemplative note, painting each leaf and feather with a tenderness that is at once manic and meditative. Deriving its title from the term for an empty tomb or monument erected in honor of those who perished elsewhere, Kuharic’s Cenotaph, 2020 grapples with the passage of time, the erosion of our natural environment while contrasting nature’s abundant beauty with its piercing brutality. Kuharic completed her BFA in Painting and Drawing at Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad including exhibits in Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Stockholm, London, and Amsterdam. Kuharic has had museum exhibitions at the St. Louis Art Museum, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, the South Bend Regional Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, and the Portsmouth Museum of Art.