How can it possibly be October already? Soon enough, we’ll be setting the clocks back once again, which increasingly feels like an effort to recover lost time. For lifelong goths such as myself, however, this season is all about the city’s many thrills and chills, and of course the casual reminders of our own mortality. Our monthly highlights include topographical studies of battlegrounds and cemeteries, ghosts of Manhattan’s geological past, and the terrors of theocratic rule. Happy Halloween, my friends!
Enrico Riley: Stand
On the surface, Enrico Riley’s radiant paintings of Black and Brown dancers exude joy and freedom. Looking deeper, though, these monochromatic compositions, which curator Connie H. Choi describes as “deceptively simple,” seem to exist in an in-between space straddling figuration, abstraction, agency, and entrapment. In subtle critiques of the Western canon, Riley positions his subjects in positions of fluidity and fugitivity — their featureless faces and coordinated body language speak for generations of enslaved, indentured, and segregated lives yearning for the simple joy of self-expression.
Jenkins Johnson Gallery (jenkinsjohnsongallery.com)
207 Ocean Avenue, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn
Through October 29
