Karen Arm '89 presents 'Night Birds,' her seventh solo show with P·P·O·W

Visual Arts alum Karen Arm '89 has opened her seventh solo show with downtown gallery P·P·O·W. Night Birds, a virtuosic and airy collection of paintings, is on view at P·P·O·W through August 15, 2025.

Night Birds is a culmination of six years of paintings created with a motif of celestial objects, such as coronas and birds, using Arm's trademark, meticulous process of layering and glazing. "In dense accumulations of waves, rays, dots, and lines, Arm’s meditative compositions seem to push and pull against their own visual gravity," P·P·O·W said. 

Arm's latest collection is about more than just the sky; incisive inclusion of the ocean in Untitled (Night Birds) 2025 brings the impact of celestial forces into Arm's visual oeuvre. "The rays of the sun or moon, the waves of the ocean, and the coordinated flight of birds are bound together in an energetic rhythm that connects the viewer to the spirit of our earth’s origins," P·P·O·W said. 

Arm's first solo exhibition at P·P·O·W debuted in 1999. The collection, like Night Birds, used intricate lines and patterns to create a sublime, meditative experience for viewers.

Karen Arm engages in a dialogue between micro and macro; mark and object; and structure and line. Arm meticulously layers and glazes her surfaces, creating vast accumulations of spontaneous marks. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Loong Mah, VSOP Projects, Foley Gallery, 56 Henry, Fortnight Institute, the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, and the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, OH. In 2002, Arm received a New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Painting. From 2012 to 2016, Arm’s works were exhibited in the United States Embassy in Burma as part of the Art in Embassies Program. She received her BFA from Cooper Union and lives in Brooklyn and Shelter Island, New York.