Enrico Riley

Overview
Enrico Riley, Untitled: Witness, Triangle Trade, 2019
Enrico Riley, Untitled: Witness, Triangle Trade, 2019

Enrico Riley’s (b. 1973, Westbury, CT) paintings investigate violence and hope in historical and contemporary cultural traditions in African American culture. The artist uses formal techniques to expose the limitations of linear narratives, including fractured bodies, hidden figures, ambiguous environments, and cropped frames. About his new body of work, Riley has stated, "I’m interested in the materiality of paint, the expressive potential of painted images and about issues around black identity and visibility."

 

As we have seen, Riley’s thugs are not pictured; they are hidden or lurking off canvas, represented only by the weapons they carry. He is even less forthcoming about whether his scenes refer to the specific recent episodes of violence enacted upon African American bodies in the United States. There may very well be echoes of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown in Evening, which appears to represent police violence, or Procession, with its suggestion of martyrdom. Riley has indicated that he is “interested in retiring to biblical narratives as a path to common on present day interpretations of the black body, and to communicate about the vulnerability and suffering of human beings today”. The alternation in this statement between the specific (“the black body”) and the universal (“human beings”) captures the ambiguous terrain mined by Riley’s powerful new work.

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