Grace Carney: To the Bone

P·P·O·W is pleased to present To the Bone, Grace Carney’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Starting each painting from a position of discomfort or self-imposed limitation, Carney treats color, light, and composition like an unruly orchestra. Over the course of months, and sometimes years, Carney labors over each surface, using hands, fingers, brushes, palette knives, and printing tools to balance opposing forces within her canvases and bring harmony to moments of dissonance. Referencing Baroque and Renaissance painting, literature, daily life, and her own body, Carney wrestles with distinct personal narratives, memories, and relationships in a state of bold vulnerability while leaving space for open-ended interpretation and free association.

Representing a year of work, the exhibition moves between states of heaviness and longing while gradually shifting toward joy and hopefulness. While the earlier paintings on view are defined by sculptural forms, long shadows, thick impasto, and deep, moody hues, the later canvases are soft, bright, and energetic with thinly layered washes of color. Lending its title to the exhibition, To the Bone, 2026, resides at the intersection of these states. Inspired by dichotomous symmetries found in nature, the work reveals kindred geometry in the ornate structure of a deer’s vertebrae and the intricate bloom of an orchid flower. Cold, brittle, white weightlessness is broken up, finding a new equilibrium between saturation and levity at the painting’s organic, fleshy center. As opposed to earlier works that center on a singular bodily form, To the Bone incorporates moments of clarity in which fragments of life emerge — not only through the body, but also in the form of built environments, landscapes, and the passage of time.

Elsewhere, Carney hones a sense of abject stillness in works such as The Thud of Unripe Fruit, 2026. Referencing a line in Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s seminal Duino Elegies, the painting locates a splendid whole amidst elements drawn from feelings of intense lethargy. Beginning with a languid figure at the work’s center, Carney uses repeated layers of paint to emulate the folds of the body, likening them to the rippling forms of draped fabric. Shapes tighten and overlap as they edge toward the central belly, contrasting with thin sheets of color and strong diagonal lines that spread across the external planes of the painting. Brisk ribbons of lush greens and rich, rosy reds cut through the composition, showing that harmony and vitality can still be found in moments of doubt or discomfort.

The exhibition also includes the beginnings of a new series of small-scale paintings inspired by Renaissance portraiture. Acting as individual portraits of the larger canvases, these works intimately capture their essences and guiding principles while drawing viewers in to observe the individual marks of the artist’s hand. In Affable Archangel, 2026, burnt umbers and raw siennas carve their way upward from the bottom edge while traces of cool, milky blues and whites peek through the warm haze. Paying homage to the forces that guide us through difficult times or states of deep concentration, Carney’s works simultaneously represent an inward reflection and an outward look at what lies beyond.

Grace Carney (b. 1992) was born in Minnesota and received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, in 2014, followed by 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 is in the permanent collections of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Aïshti Foundation, Jal El Dib, Lebanon; Marquez Art Projects, Miami, FL; Pond Society, Shanghai, China; and Scharpff-Striebich Collection, Berlin, Germany. She has been featured in various publications, including Galerie Magazine and W Magazine. Her group exhibitions include I’m Not Your Mother, P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Three Women: Grace Carney, Jeane Cohen, Abigail Dudley, Steven Harvey Fine Arts Projects, New York, NY; Considering Female Abstractions, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; and Table Manners, Barbati Gallery, Venice, Italy. Carney has presented solo exhibitions internationally, including Wrestle, Beacon Gallery, Munich, Germany; girlgirlgirl, P·P·O·W, New York, NY; and Subrisio Saltat, Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong.