Kenny Rivero: This, That, and The Third Eye
For this exhibition, Rivero created a series of six large oil on linen works. Painted simultaneously over the course of this past summer in Rivero's studio in the South Bronx, the paintings feature familiar vignettes and emblems of a New York City summer - a fire hydrant bursting on the sidewalk, the low brick walls that border uptown paths along the Hudson, buoys floating in the river, the pick-up game of catch in the middle of the street, the church parking lot turned over to a space of play and informal art-making.
Charles Moffett is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by New York-based artist Kenny Rivero at No.9 Cork Street. Coinciding with Frieze London and Masters 2023, This, That, and The Third Eye marks the first presentation of the artist's work in the U.K. and his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. In recent years, Rivero's work has been exhibited in institutions across the U.S., including solo exhibitions at The Momentary, Bentonville, AR; Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY; and the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Vermont; and has been acquired into the permanent collections of major museums including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
Rivero's visual arts practice, which spans paintings, collage, drawings, and sculpture, explores the complexity of identity through narrative images, language, and symbolism. Born in Washington Heights to Dominican parents and now based in the Bronx, Rivero's aim is to deconstruct the histories he has been raised to understand as absolute and to explore what he perceives as the broken narrative of Dominican American identity, socio-geographic solidarity, familial expectations, race, and gender roles. Emerging from a diverse religious upbringing that incorporated Christianity, Vodun, Santeria and Afro-Caribbean spiritual practices, Rivero's hybrid faith poetically inflects his work.
A trained musician, Rivero brings a lyrical, instinctive approach to his painting practice, beginning a new work by applying and shifting paint on the canvas in a rhythmic fashion, allowing the different elements of the composition to improvisationally arrive in their pre-destined forms. For this exhibition, Rivero created a series of six large oil on linen works. Painted simultaneously over the course of this past summer in Rivero's studio in the South Bronx, the paintings feature familiar vignettes and emblems of a New York City summer - a fire hydrant bursting on the sidewalk, the low brick walls that border uptown paths along the Hudson, buoys floating in the river, the pick-up game of catch in the middle of the street, the church parking lot turned over to a space of play and informal art-making.
The paintings are unquestionably grounded in the tangible and distinctive visual vernacular of New York City; yet are also deeply resonant with Rivero's personal spiritual practice and evolving beliefs in the phenomena of faith, an afterlife, divination, and connection between the ancestors and the living. A potent undercurrent of mysticism courses through and weaves together all of the paintings. Evoked in symbols both universal (the watchful third eye, a hovering skull) and particular to Rivero (painted hand mirrors, flowers aflame), these vividly painted totems comprise the artist's personal, painterly lexicon. However winding and mysterious, the paintings possess the clues to unravel their case; Rivero carefully laying out a map key to guide the viewer through this nebulous space hovering between the living and the dead.
Kenny Rivero (b. 1981; lives and works in New York. MFA Yale 2012, BFA SVA 2006): Rivero's work is represented in notable public collections including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Collection of Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas.
