Jenkins Johnson Projects is pleased to present Enrico Riley’s solo exhibition, New World. 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.
Enrico Riley challenges viewers to decipher and contextualize his work’s fractured narratives. For many Americans, exposure to the plethora of recent media examples of reflexive violence perpetrated on African-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.