Charles Moffett is pleased to present This, That, and The Third Eye, a solo exhibition of new work by New York-based artist Kenny Rivero. Rivero’s work, 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 and identities he has been raised to understand as absolute and to re-engineer them into new wholes, with new functions and new stories. His creative process allows him to explore what he perceives as the broken narrative of Dominican American identity, socio-geographic solidarity, familial expectations, race, and gender roles.
A trained musician, Rivero cites the hybrid qualities of salsa, hip-hop, house music, jazz, and merengue as core influences on his decision-making in the studio. Home to drums, keyboards, guitars and recording equipment, alongside paints, brushes, and canvases, Rivero’s studio is a site of intuitive and cross-disciplinary creation. Bringing a lyrical, instinctive approach to his painting practice in particular, Rivero begins a new work by applying and shifting paint on the canvas in a rhythmic fashion, echoing the music that fills the studio, and allowing the painting to improvisationally arrive to its pre-destined form. The artist often works on one canvas over the course of several months if not years, returning again and again to discover the painting’s evolving form.
Coinciding with Frieze London 2023, this 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, Bentonville, Arkansas and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
