Kenny Rivero paints the monsters under the bed. The sort that make you have to dream extra hard, just to distract you enough to forget their snoring. And his paintings feel like attempts to recreate these dreams, monsters and all. They often include references to pop culture and New York streets, but through the distorted, unfamiliar appearance they make in dreams—references not to the material, but our memory of them.
NIAMI: Your work made me think a lot about magical realism, and a lot of the theory work done with magical realism and magical thinking in relation to artists of color and their processes with trauma—life does not make sense a lot of the time, and you are forced to think magically. What does magic do for your work and where does it take you?
The work comes from longing, it comes from mourning. There’s a lot of grief in the work. Thinking about beauty and making things beautiful, I’m trying to trick the viewer into unpacking something a lot more heavy and serious. These are not necessarily things I want decoded—I don’t necessarily care what the viewer is able to unpack in the work, for me, it’s just a place to put it. It’s not to exorcize from my body, but rather something I can play with and understand for myself.
RIVERO: I think a lot of people don’t necessarily see this when they see the work. I always start formally. I never start with a plan. When I start with a plan or start sketching—I get so fucking bored. For me, the spirit of painting comes from discovering what the work means to be. That sounds wishy-washy, but it really is me being anxious working through the paint and being frustrated and erasing things and maybe discovering a moment that looks like an elbow.
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