Freight + Volume is pleased to present Riad Miah: Is it Tomorrow (Or Just the End of Time), where a series of paintings evince the artist’s continued exploration of diverse materials and amusingly pertinent inspirations. Employing materials including oil, acrylic, Dura-Lar, and canvas, to explore the interplay of surface and texture—thick and thin, translucent and opaque, and matte and glossy—the artist showcases a selection of fastidiously pieced together shaped canvases.
The work exists at the intersection of rigor and play, spontaneity and control. 90 degree angles of the constructed panels are planted alongside curvaceous forms. With an improvisational flair the work is deliberately challenging to any readymade idea of what a painting may contain. Custom-fit with splashes, grids, and capricious edges, the work’s unpredictability belie a casual nuance. They burst with a cool aptitude for blending influences collected along the way.
In It Makes You Go Whooh the work merges spirited marks with the structure found amongst the artist’s repertoire. Interlacing lines seem to glide atop the surface like streamers. A loosely rendered grid in smudged orange paint is fixed under the flowing lines. An interlocked panel offers broad lyrical brushstrokes. Bold shapes seem as reinterpreted fragments of Matisse’s The Dancer. All speaking to a balance between rigid and fluid, coarse and elegant, punctuated with the historical and contemporary.
The work draws from a broad spectrum of influences, from postwar abstraction to the experimental practices of the 1970s, when unconventional structures and material explorations expanded the horizons of painting. Elements of graffiti serve as visual and conceptual references, while incidental marks— spills, drips, and other “accidents” in the studio—act as starting points for creation. These gestures are then transformed into carefully crafted compositions that strike a balance between precision and chance.
Through this synthesis of media and process, the work negotiates the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, spontaneity and deliberation, intuition and design. They are in fact a mirror of the artist’s life between the Caribbean and the urbanity of New York.
Riad Miah (b. Trinidad) currently lives and works in New York City. His work has been exhibited at the Equity Gallery, Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, Sperone Westwater, Wave Hill, White Box Gallery, Rooster Contemporary Art, Simon Gallery, and Lesley Heller Workshop. He has received fellowships and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Germination Europe. He has been nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Rema Hort-Mann Award, and the Basil H. Alkazzi Award for Excellence in Painting. Riad’s works are included in private collections, university, and corporate collections, including Novartis and the Children's Hospital in Cincinnati.