Take Your Time

Artist Enrico Riley is best known for paintings that investigate violence and hope in cultural traditions in African American culture. His new work—created for his exhibition at the Institute for the Humanities Gallery—is personal and abstract. Started as an attempt to paint for himself, away from the center of things and off at the edges, they are from the spaces of private thought that slip into existence and just as easily slip away. They come from an internal conversation and contact with the world. "When I am with them," Riley explains, "I feel a tension between the spaces in the works being present but unnamed. The paintings allow me to observe myself looking. I am acutely aware of time. Maybe they are an invitation to speculate."