Eric-Paul Riege Opens First Institutional Solo in New York at Canal Projects

The installation, titled iiZiiT [3]: RIEGE Jewelry + Supply, comprises new works of soft sculpture and video as a mode of examining authenticity, pawn shops, and trading posts in the Southwest United States, which draws relations to the exhibition site of Canal Projects on Canal Street, where the counterfeit merchandise industry thrives.

The artist’s hanging sculptures blend manufactured and natural products, from hand-spun wool and horse hair to faux fur and pleather. Riege titles these works jaatloh4Ye’iitsoh, which refers to “ear rope for the big gods/monsters,” the Holy People of Diné tradition. Their varied textures, the changes the wool undergoes as part of Riege’s process, and their ability to heighten one’s senses – a revelation shared with Riege by his maternal grandmother – imbue these forms with their own animacy as they welcome the viewer into the space.

Simultaneously, the contrast of materials and their play between “real” and “fake” brings up notions of authenticity and the marketplace that reflect the legacy of trading posts and pawn shops surrounding Riege’s home in Na’nízhoozhí (Gallup, New Mexico). Largely established by settlers, these sites buy and sell Native goods but often divorce them from their original contexts and cater directly to non-Native tourists. Riege further negotiates the lines of spectatorship and home by creating his own interpretations of a hooghan, or ceremonial place, in the center of the installation space.

iiZiiT [3]: RIEGE Jewelry + Supply remains on view through Saturday, March 29. Riege’s work is also currently on view in group exhibitions at the Shepherd, the Montclair Art Museum, and, opening February 14, Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time at the Hudson River Museum.