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. He floats between the realms of reality and magic, balancing between the imagined and the physical as much as his illusions require. They are intricate, intentional, and cross-dimensional, manipulated through shape and line. They’re as formalistic as they need to be, to provide an idea enough leg strength to run.
