Artist: Cheryl R. Riley

Artworks

Articles & Reviews

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At Some Point, Every Household Object Stops Being Innocent

No one ever thinks the plate is going to become a problem.

A plate survives three apartments and one bad Thanksgiving. A suitcase gets hauled across borders or shoved beneath beds; sometimes it is packed in hope, sometimes because someone has no choice. An iron presses school clothes and funeral clothes, then outlives its usefulness and sits in a closet somewhere, still holding the pressure of human hands.

That is the animating idea behind extraORDINARY things, the quietly arresting exhibition at the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich Library.

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Amulets Ethereal at Barney Savage

[caption id="attachment_1044" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Amulets Ethereal, partial installation view, photo courtesy of Barney Savage gallery[/caption]

“Amulets Ethereal,” the thought provoking group exhibition curated by Jenny Mushkin Goldman at Barney Savage features works by Kharis Kennedy, Adam Krueger & Tableaux Vivants, Victoria Manganiello & Julian Goldman, Qinza Najm, Cheryl R. Riley, and Ashley Zelinskie. The artworks in this show run the gamut from manipulated found objects, like Cheryl Riley’s old farm tools and Qinza Najm’s carpet, to fabricated sculptures like Ashley Zelinskie’s 3-d printed futuristic cyborgs and Victoria Manganiello / Julian Goldman’s computerized weaving; from wearable art like the sewn tattooed silicon mask by the duo  Adam Krueger and Tableaux Vivants to Kharis Kennedy’s mysterious painting of a masked figure with a goat. Collectively the artworks are recontextualized as open-ended ritualized objects and images endowed with the questionable power to shield the viewer from the most tenuous of perceived dangers.