Duke Riley
December 30, 2019 – February 3, 2020
Exhibition: early to mid 2021
Duke Riley earned a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute. Working as a fine artist and tattooist, Riley uses drawing, printmaking, mosaic, sculpture, video and performative interventions structured as complex multimedia installations to interweave historical and contemporary events with elements of fiction and myth to create allegorical histories. Fascinated by maritime history and the cultures found in the nautical landscape, his re- imagined narratives comment on a range of issues from the cultural impact of over- development and gentrification of waterfront communities to contradictions within political ideologies as well as commerce and the role of the artist in society and at war.
Often working above the law and below the radar in abandoned or neglected spaces, Riley has organized and staged revolutionary engagements in and around New York City and other urban waterways. For Belmont Island SMEAC staged during the 2004 Republican National Convention, Riley planted a flag on an uninhabited island in the East River, under the shadow of the UN, declaring it a sovereign nation; the Coast Guard caught up with, questioned and released him. Most famously, Riley received international exposure in 2007 for After the Battle of Brooklyn when he commanded a custom crafted wooden submarine toward the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner docked in the New York Harbor, reenacting the attempted Revolutionary-era attack on a British battleship by a similarly designed submarine. Riley was captured and arrested within yards of the cruise ship; his vessel was confiscated. And in 2009 for Those About to Die Salute You, Riley transformed reeds from an invasive plant species and materials from the old ice rink, in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, into boats representing the five boroughs and staged an epic roman naval battle in a flooded pool on the former World’s Fair grounds. After attending what art critic Jerry Saltz called “Duke Riley’s Insane Triumph” he credited Riley as one of the people “righting the ship that is the New York art world.”
Riley has had solo exhibitions at Magnan Metz Gallery, New York City; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; the Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; and the Havana Biennial, among other venues. He has received numerous awards, residencies and commissions, including The Percent for Art Commission, a Creative Time Global Residency in Africa, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and the Metropolitan Transit Authority Arts For Transit commission. In 2016, Riley realized his most ambitious public work and largest project to date, Fly By Night, produced by Creative Time and was recognized with a Village Voice Lifetime Achievement Award for Elevating the Prestige of Pigeons in the Public Consciousness.
