Edgeless: In the Expanded Field of Painting

San Diego State University Art Gallery, San Diego, CA

September 24, 2026 - December 3, 2026

Curated by Jacqueline Marino

Anna Betbeze, Monique van Genderen, Lizzie Zelter, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung

Edgeless: In the Expanded Field of Painting brings together four painters, each of whom incorporate both traditional and unconventional media as material and surface. Marked by hybridity and permeable boundaries, the “expanded field” of painting refers to an approach of rethinking what a painting can do beyond the medium’s physicality and enduring history.

While nontraditional approaches to art have existed across cultures and throughout history, the concept of an expanded field was first articulated by critic and art historian, Rosalind Krauss, in her 1979 essay, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” Though Krauss addressed the changing definition of sculpture, her analysis challenged postwar conventions of medium specificity and the limitations they placed on how artists could engage with material and form. These ideas resonated with developments in painting, as artists who had been incorporating physical action, performance and material experimentation into their work moved further beyond the frame and stretcher.

Edgeless highlights this trajectory. Using conceptual, intuitive and elemental processes, artists cut, print, stitch, burn, dye and fire their materials to create the suggestion of a painting, or incorporate strategies of sculpture alongside the act of painting. Additionally, fragments of poetry, feminist theory, literature and film, as well as actions of play and touch, provide unending source material for each artist to translate, layer and deconstruct through their singular modes of abstraction.

Throughout the exhibition, Edgeless considers contemporary practices that exemplify the potential of the medium while remaining firmly grounded in and continually returning to the act of painting.