P·P·O·W is pleased to present Life Looks Like a House For a Few Hours, Erin M. Riley’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. In a new body of meticulously crafted and powerfully vulnerable large-scale weavings, domestic scenes congeal and dissolve amidst family photos, car crashes, iPhone selfies, and newspaper clippings. Collaging moments from her past and present, Riley intersperses images of herself with memories of her childhood home before it was lost in a storm of separation, alleged affairs, and foreclosure. Throughout these works, Riley investigates the forces that shaped her life and the splintering of personal identity, dissecting each layer to reveal the secrets within.

Riley’s innovative approach to fiber obscures the binary opposition between fine art and craft, shifting the discourse around the medium by merging complex, often sensitive, subject matter from the digital and physical realms. Using hand-dyed wool and cotton yarns sourced from shuttered textile mills, Riley executes her hand-woven tapestries using a thoroughly nuanced and personalized color palette. With this technique, the Brooklyn-based weaver carefully renders the pixelated effect of screenshots and Photo Booth selfies interlaced with moments extracted from old family photographs or culled from memory.

In Somebody Cares, 2025, the artist’s lingerie-clad body reclines across an asphalt highway while a totaled car, discarded beer bottle, and illuminated window emblazoned with the letters “S.O.S.” suggest preceding, or impending, disaster. Another work, You Broke, 2025, integrates a text overlay from a scene in Sex and the City, in which Carrie’s boyfriend, Aidan, exclaims “you broke my heart!” referring to an affair that leads her back to an old relationship. Through these montaged environments, Riley examines the parallels between her childhood and the illicit relationships she developed in adulthood, writing, “As a kid who was passed back and forth amidst child support battles, it always felt like I was torn between alliances, much like the feeling of following the heart in matters that have ethical grey areas.” Learning to fragment herself when moving through spaces so as not to reveal too much, Riley’s works demonstrate the turmoil that ensues when allegiances are divided.

Erin M. Riley’s (b. 1985) received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art. Riley’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco, CA; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Gana Art Gallery, Seoul, South Korea; kaufmann repetto, New York, NY, and Milan, Italy; Timothy Taylor, London, UK; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Museion, Bolzano, Italy; and the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France; among others. Riley received a United States Artists Fellowship Grant in 2021, and an American Academy of Arts & Letters Art Purchase Prize in 2021, in addition to completing residencies at MacDowell Colony, NH, and the Museum of Art and Design, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include The Invisible Third at UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA; watering false flowers, cadet capela, Paris, France; and Look Back at It, mother’s tankstation, London, UK.