BRIGHTSTONEMARBLE

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Life Looks Like a House For a Few Hours, Erin M. Riley’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. In a new body of meticulously crafted and powerfully vulnerable large-scale weavings, domestic scenes congeal and dissolve amidst family photos, car crashes, iPhone selfies, and newspaper clippings. Collaging moments from her past and present, Riley intersperses images of herself with memories of her childhood home before it was lost in a storm of separation, alleged affairs, and foreclosure. Throughout these works, Riley investigates the forces that shaped her life and the splintering of personal identity, dissecting each layer to reveal the secrets within.

One of the highlights of Daniela García Hamilton: Amanecer / Atardecer (Sunrise / Sunset) at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles is the embodiment of absence. She is at her best when the works stitch into the canvas a sense of loss memories, letting the raw canvas take space and speak to the setting of the work. Hamilton combines embroidery and oil painting, often depicting what appears to be family photos and subtle hints of found photography, and there is this beautiful and almost painful conversation of what it means when we say cultural assimilation, or what the galleries calls “the inevitability of assimilation.” That is where the empty space of the canvas comes to play, where she is either hinting…