Rives Wiley
October 7-30, 2016
Dinner Party Download
I envision scenes as a blend of the real, surreal, and virtual overlaid with an inner commentary and bound up by contemporary social conventions. In every sense, the figures are trapped in an image. They are confined to the scene in appearance, thought, behavior. My work attempts to expose the restraints, repetitions, acquiescence to social norms, acceptance of convention, and dissolution of original expression.
Although my paintings, actors, and sets are painted by hand, they are intimately informed by a digital aesthetic and often attempt to hide evidence of the painter’s touch. This juxtaposition, or tension between the hand imitation the digital through familiar settings, strikes a chord within the viewer that persuades them to reexamine how they fit into their own realities.
Rives Wiley, born in 1990, is a painter and video maker working in Washington, DC. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2013. She recently attended Vermont Studio Center, was featured in Maake Magazine, and was selected as a Hamiltonian Fellow. Her work is currently in a two-person exhibition at the Pataphysical Society in Portland, OR, and she will debut an installation at Satellite Art Fair during Miami Basel this December. Dinner Party Download is her first solo exhibtion.
