ARTIST STATEMENT
Synthesizing sources that range from ancient visual systems to contemporary cosmology and quantum mechanics, my work functions as an evolving map of perception—tracing how consciousness is shaped and continually reconfigured within the information-dense conditions of the twenty-first century. I am currently developing a cycle of large-scale, multi-panel oil paintings titled Spheres of Uncertainty, in which each work operates as a planet-like repository of information, examining the psychological and material realities of living amid sustained instability.
The project centers on the sphere as its primary motif, drawing on the Uncertainty Principle of quantum mechanics as both a conceptual framework and a metaphor for the limits of knowledge. This inquiry is shaped by the simultaneous acceleration of artificial intelligence and the intensification of political and environmental crises—forces that compress and amplify uncertainty at once. Systems designed to predict, optimize, and simulate coexist with an expanding sense of existential precarity.
Within each painting, iconic imagery and original poetic language accumulate into dense visual archives, mapping overlapping terrains of collective and personal hopes, anxieties, and contradictions. Up close one will find scratches, ghosted fragments, and carved lines that reveal the intimacy of the process. From afar, these details dissolve into compositions that flicker between coherence and collapse. The result is a shifting experience where image and material press against one another and the paintings offer not just images but conditions for perception. They ask viewers to slow down, to inhabit uncertainty, and to engage with the instability of seeing itself—where illusion meets material, and where each canvas becomes a container for memory, time, and the possibility of transformation.
BIO
Born 1977 in Wareham, MA.
Riley holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Pennsylvania (2004) and a BFA in Painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (1999).
His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the Northeast including; Hillyer Gallery in DC, Danese/Corey in New York City, TSA NY in Brooklyn, NY, Gallery 263 in Cambridge, MA, Lamont Gallery in Exeter, NH, Arthur Ross Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY, and several others.
He has received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Berkshire Taconic Foundation. Riley has been an artist in residence at the Joan Mitchell Center, Yaddo, and the Vermont Studio Center.
Riley currently lives and works in Washington DC and maintains a studio in Colle di Tora, in Italy's Turano Valley.