Eric-Paul Riege’s “iiZiiT [3]: RIEGE Jewelry + Supply”
Canal Projects
351 Canal Street, NY NY 10013
January 31 - March 29, 2025
https://www.canalprojects.org
Walking west on Canal Street, just a few miles south of the climate-controlled showrooms and masterfully-lit display cases of Upper East Side’s luxury district, I pass a dozen or so vendors selling knockoff luxury handbags and designer shoes, all displayed on blankets laid out on the sidewalk. Such is the material culture of Canal Street, the merchandise district where Eric-Paul Riege’s Canal Projects exhibition iiZiiT [3]: RIEGE Jewelry + Supply is on display from January 31 to March 29. Riege is a multimedia “artist, maker, and language-keeper working in woven sculpture, installation, wearable art, collage, sound, and durational performance.” His work examines ideas of authenticity, value, economies, exchange systems, materiality, and cultural identity. In iiZiiT [3]: RIEGE Jewelry + Supply, Riege contemplates these ideas while examining the legacy of American Southwest pawn shops and trading posts he often encounters in his home of Na’nízhoozhí (Gallup, New Mexico). The tension of “real” vs. “fake” ties into the title of the show—iiZiiT being a linguistic riff on the words “is it?” and “for real?” often spoken on the Diné/Navajo Nation where Riege lives.
This layered exhibition of installation, sculpture, and video is located in Canal Project’s basement gallery where, in the middle of the room, hangs from the low ceiling a large sculpture—or a constellation of soft sculptures—like mammoth chandelier earrings. The cozy, confined space and eye-level sculptures lend to the artist encouraging viewers to walk within the hanging sculptures. “In doing so, Riege invites us to consider the complex dynamics of host and guest, insider and outsider, and how these relationships are negotiated both in public spaces and on unceded land.”
Titled jaatloh4Ye’iitsoh (Earrings for the Big Gods), this centerpiece consists of large felted “beads” strung and tasseled and suspended from the ceiling. Within the installation are also “found and purchased Native regalia,” including hides and necklaces, as well as plastic weavings made from repurposed packing materials. The sculptures are made of myriad materials, both new and old, natural and artificial. Also, is that necklace really antique? Is that actual horse hair, real silver, genuine turquoise? And are those beads made from real wool or synthetic fibers felted to look like such? Riege, whose matrilineal heritage is one of weavers, encourages this contemplation as the journey of materials holds meaning—“the acts of spinning wool and weaving […] memorialize the changes and journeys that wool undertakes, having its own animacy and aura.” Does it matter whether it's "real" or not? This question is open-ended to the viewer.
What does matter is the exchange of materials. With a sketchy history of unethical trading practices, “today, modern trading posts continue to buy and sell Native goods, often catering to tourists and offering items disconnected from their original contexts and creators” and often selling their art to shops at a much lower rate than their resale price, all to the detriment of the Indigenous maker, their culture, and economic agency. The RIEGE Jewelry + Supply part of the exhibition title points to his emphasis on these concepts. Did I mention that this is a site-specific exhibition? Riege’s commentary purposely echoes that of the vendors on Canal Street, just outside the gallery walls.
On the back wall behind the sculpture is a video projection of Riege performing his “weaving dance.” Serving as a mock advertisement for the RIEGE Jewelry + Supply, he dances with the large beads “in which the textile sculptures are jingled, dropped, and moved in reverbbed and low hums, capturing their ambient and energetic movements.” In addition to Riege’s mesmerizing movements, the editing for this work is super trippy, with post-production techniques that create a vibe more than explain what is being advertised—just like actual advertising. I loved this component of the exhibit, and unless your back is to it, it can be seen in the background from wherever you look.
In addition to cultural and economic factors, for Riege, jewelry also carries spiritual significance. “As one of Riege’s grandmothers taught him, wearing jewelry is thought to amplify the senses: earrings can hear what we miss and necklaces placed close to the heart help us feel emotions more deeply.” The concept of the personal meaning imbued within a piece of jewelry is likely universal—to a tourist, a piece of jewelry might be purchased as a gift or souvenir, as an appreciation for the beauty and craftsmanship of the pieces, or purely as beautiful decoration to adorn the body. Riege’s exhibition informs of the ancient and spiritual significance of this jewelry, and with this context reinserted into the viewer’s understanding, a different perspective surfaces. Rather than—or in addition to—leaning toward the visible messages of mass consumerism and cultural appropriation—or cultural dilution—Riege leans into a similarly complex space: supersizing cultural iconography and a celebratory stance on cultural consumerism where the culturally consumed are empowered so much so it leans toward the hyperreal. A new twist on the iiZiiT question is posed: This is real, but what is real?
Yancey Richardson
525 West 22nd Street, NY NY 10011
February 27 - April 12, 2025
https://www.yanceyrichardson.com
The collaborative project of works by artists Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito called orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit is on exhibition at Yancey Richardson in Chelsea from February 27-April 12, 2025. The five works on view are cotton and wool tapestries that combine photography and weaving mediums to capture ephemeral moments with an imprint that mimics the abstraction akin to a faded memory—lights, forms, feeling.
This exhibition is a hidden gem in the space's side gallery. The four horizontal and vertical tapestries in the 40 x 60-inch range and a single larger, 41 x 90-inch piece hang in an intimate environment. The space is small, but the show—abundant with color, texture, and both textual and organic abstractions—is not.
Artists Letinsky and Morabito have been collaborators since 2013. Their approach is foundational in that it understands “the loom as a kind of precursor to the creative capacities” of the digital age. From this lens, they explore the possibilities and dialogues marrying the two mediums, exploring the unevident relationship between the ancient technology of weaving and the modern technologies of photography and computer/digital art.
The works are inspired by a 2014 trip to India where Letinsky made regular visits to the early-morning Bangalore Flower market where the streets were littered with remnants of “crushed gladiolas, orchids, roses, marigolds and lilies blended together creating dense and vivid fields of complex color.” Known for her “investigation of photography’s relationship to temporality, specifically through the genre of still-life,” Letinsky captured the scene and Morabito then reimagined the works as weavings—translating the single moment captured through a slow process of layered and tangled colors of wool and cotton. The unfinished, untidy fraying edges, cascading from the sides and below, with bits of pieces of wool strands poking out the surface add a tactility and sense of chaos that lends to the emotionality of the works—if they would look too buttoned-up, too manufactured to conjure the sense of awe, loss, and beauty-overwhelm—moments viscerally felt—that the artists intended. Tapestries too tidy would overshadow the fragility found in random moments.
It’s hard to pick a stand-out piece—the painterly abstractions all lend themselves to different states of being: uplifting, moody, introspective, inspired. Is color an emotion? I vote yes. The examination of experience, the warping of immediacy into slow work and then back to immediacy, the overlap of handwork and digital—all these conjure ideas. But also, to simply experience the beauty and color of these abstractions, no ideas are needed.
America the Beautiful, curated by Manju Shandler
The Old Stone House
336 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
February 27, 2025 – April 27, 2025
https://theoldstonehouse.org/
Please also check out the exhibition America the Beautiful, where Fay Ku, a current Textile Art Center Artist in Residence, is exhibiting a work. This group exhibition is currently up at The Old Stone House through April 27, 2025.