Erin M. Riley (left) and Alina Perez (right)
P·P·O·W is pleased to host a conversation between artists Erin M. Riley and Alina Perez in conjunction with Life Looks Like a House For a Few Hours, Riley's third solo exhibition with the gallery. Using the works on view as a point of departure, the artists will investigate the various themes they share across their practices, including self-portraiture as a means of exploration, the enduring effects of familial trauma, and memory as material.
Life Looks Like a House For a Few Hours is currently on view at 392 Broadway through Saturday, October 18.
Please join us for this in-person event at 392 Broadway on Saturday, October 4 at 4pm.
No RSVP necessary. Seating will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Erin M. Riley’s (b. 1985) meticulously crafted, large-scale tapestries depict intimate, erotic, and psychologically raw imagery that reflects upon relationships, memories, fantasies, sexual violence, and trauma. Collaging personal photographs, images sourced from the internet, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera to create her compositions, the Brooklyn-based weaver exposes the range of women’s lived experiences and how trauma weighs on the search for self-identity. Riley 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.
Alina Perez (b. 1995) creates monumental works on paper using charcoal and pastel, blending personal recollection and imagination to rethink familial history, personal trauma, and notions of identity that are rooted in both the individual and in geography. Her lexicon of symbols and environments pull heavily from her lived experiences as a Cuban-American raised in Miami, FL, examining the relationship between the dense and vulnerable life of the region’s tropical wetlands and the depth of human experience. Perez’s work has been exhibited at the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA; Atlanta Contemporary, GA; Arcadia Missa Gallery & Publishers, London, UK; Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY; Deli Gallery, New York, NY; James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY; Rachel Uffner, New York, NY; Company Gallery, New York, NY; and M+B, Los Angeles, CA. Work by Perez was included in Flow States – LA TRIENAL 2024, the second edition of El Museo del Barrio’s triennial surveying Latinx contemporary art. In 2017, Perez was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME, and has attended residencies at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA; the Ox-Bow School of Art, Saugatuck, MI; and the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. Perez received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art. The artist lives and works in New York, NY.