‘Edgeless’ pushes painting beyond its boundaries

Painting doesn’t have to stop at the edge of a canvas.

In Edgeless: In the Expanded Field of Painting, four Southern California-based artists cut, stitch, burn, dye and fire their materials, pushing against conventional ideas of what painting is, and what it can become.

Presented by the San Diego State University School of Art and Design, the exhibition will be on view Sept. 24-Dec. 3, 2026, at the University Art Gallery. Curated by Jacqueline Marino, Edgeless features artists Anna Betbeze, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Monique van Genderen and Lizzie Zelter.

The exhibition explores the “expanded field of painting,” a relatively new concept that rethinks the medium beyond the limits of its long history. The artists combine traditional and nontraditional media and incorporate strategies associated with sculpture, installation and performance into the act of painting.

“I like the way their minds work - they are experimental and erudite in their approaches, which are all quite different,” Marino said.

Working through abstraction, the four artists draw from influences that extend well beyond painting. Fragments of poetry, feminist theory, literature and film, along with actions of play and touch, become source material that the artists translate and deconstruct through their individual practices.

Marino said emerging artist Lizzie Zelter exemplifies the possibilities of the expanded field through a daring “hybridized, additive approach” to painting.

She describes Monique van Genderen’s work as “the playbook to the ‘expanded field,’” pointing to her experimentation with processes, materials and scale.

“She’s pretty fearless,” Marino said.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung’s practice, Marino said, is “very hinged on language, layering meaning on theory on improvisation on comedy,” in ways that are “the opposite of formulaic.”

Anna Betbeze, meanwhile, works on Flokati rugs, creating paintings Marino describes as “completely tactile, textural and visceral.”

“All four have an incredible aptitude toward color, nuance, and curiosity,” Marino said.

Their willingness to embrace revision, experimentation and uncertainty results in compositions that resist easy definitions — and is central to what Marino hopes patrons will experience in the gallery.

“I want visitors to experience a bold and energetic show that feels alive and open-ended, taking away from it a sense of possibility and openness towards alternative approaches which are grounded in an extensive timeline of influences. Far from surface-level, these individual artists are operating on and working through their own theoretical frameworks to mediate their ideas in the visual field,” she said.

Edgeless: In the Expanded Field of Painting is organized by the SDSU Art Galleries and curated by Jacqueline Marino. Programming is supported by the School of Art and Design, the Richard Anthony Marks Endowment and the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts.

Public programs

All public programs take place on the SDSU campus.

Jacqueline Marino Lecture
Tuesday, Sept. 22, 5:30-6:45 p.m.
Hepner Hall, Room 221

Opening Reception with Artists
Thursday, Sept. 24, 4-7 p.m.
University Art Gallery
Fourth-floor courtyard

Monique van Genderen Lecture
Thursday, Oct. 8, 5:30-6:45 p.m.
Hepner Hall, Room 221

For parking information, visit the School of Art and Design Visitor Information page.