P·P·O·W is pleased to present Side Lined, an exhibition bringing together a diverse group of painters who have committed decades to their practices: Keltie Ferris, Brenda Goodman, Marilyn Lerner, Stephen Mueller, Sojourner Truth Parsons, Erika Ranee, and Julia Rommel. Through a devotional relationship to their canvases, each artist constructs images with vigor and vitality that obliterate the line between abstraction and figuration. Welding paint, tactility, light, and color to create places in which unpredictable metaphysical sensations take place, each work in the exhibition demands to be experienced physically.

This exhibition was born out of inspiring conversations with the influential painter Judith Linhares, whose work is equally literary and abstract. “Color is first,” the artist explains. “[It] helps me construct a space where anything can happen. Touching the surface of the painting repeatedly with a loaded brush working over the entire surface with every visit, I make spaces where action can happen.”

The practices highlighted within this exhibition are rooted in process, improvisation, and experimentation. Keltie Ferris’ meticulously layered canvases create a multiplanar site for constructed light and shifting space, while Julia Rommel’s minimalist yet gestural compositions are defined by the paintings’ scaffolding which drive their construction. Brenda Goodman, Erika Ranee and Sojourner Truth Parsons’ work delve into psychological and emotional realms underneath our material daily life. For over fifty years, Goodman has relentlessly explored the physical and psychological limits of abstraction and figuration through her deeply personal and expressive paintings. Ranee’s vibrant and densely built-up inventions evoke the passage of time, while Parsons’s paintings translate fleeting affective moments into visual forms. Marilyn Lerner and Stephen Mueller combine optimism and spiritualism with kaleidoscopic geometric compositions which transport the viewer into a realm of transformative introspection and vibrant energy.

In a world increasingly dominated by divisive and meaningless categorization, the artists in Side Lined aim to challenge boundaries— not enforce them. As Brenda Goodman stated in a recent interview, "If you're not experimenting, why are you painting?”