Tuesday, September 29, 2020 - noon to 4 p.m.
Paul Creative Arts Center Museum of Art
Enrico Riley, The Blues in Me: Witnessing Love, will be on view at the Museum of Art, UNH August 31 – October 30, 2020. The Museum will be open to faculty, students, and the public from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, 12:00–4:00 p.m. Thursday, 12-6:00 p.m., and by appointment for class visits before noon Monday- Friday. The in-person capacity of the museum is limited to 28 people. All visitors are expected to comply with safety and security measures listed in the University’s modes of operation.
Enrico
Riley, The Blues in Me: Witnessing Love, challenges viewers to decipher
and contextualize his work’s fractured narratives. Riley’s most recent
paintings explore themes of hope, music, and perseverance. The paintings are
part of an unfolding and evolving cycle that investigates themes of historical
and contemporary violence, martyrdom, grief, and the middle passage within a
spatial domain.202f For many Americans, exposure to the plethora of recent media
examples of reflexive violence perpetrated on Black Americans has blurred the
boundaries between the historical record with which our country is so familiar
and the problems still facing contemporary culture today. From this epicenter
of misfortune and violence, Riley is using the medium of painting as a method
for remembering and reflecting upon grief, but also as a means to investigate
the linkages between the old world and new, to not just recycle the old stories
but also to seek paths for forging new narratives. We are shown a witness of
the past, present, and future acts of violence who holds both remembrance202fof
hardship and the optimism to overcome these hardships. In these paintings and
drawings, we are given positive means to break that cycle of injustice and the
hope it can be accomplished.
Enrico Riley was born in Waterbury, CT
in 1973 and is a Professor of Studio Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.
He currently lives and works in Vermont and New Hampshire. Riley received a BA
in Visual Studies from Dartmouth College and an MFA in painting from Yale
University School of Art.
Additional programs will include an online artist talk with Enrico,
September 2, 12:10-1 p.m. The conversation will include his current work
on view and Riley’s studio practice, process, and inspirations. This talk will
be held on Zoom (limited to the first 49 participants). Reservations required.