Virginia Dare

archival pigment print of hand-constructed still life

16 x 24 inches

Courtesy of Quirk Gallery

The work in Riley Goodman's series, To Cultivate A Magnolia, weaves together a rich blend of still life, landscape, and portrait imagery, sharing Riley's journey to discover his identity and place within the city he has chosen to call home. To Cultivate A Magnolia poetically visualizes the folklore and history of Richmond and greater Virginia, the complexities of queer identity, the contemporary presence of the American Civil War, and reflections that come as we age. Riley's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time Magazine, among other outlets, and most notably resides in the permanent collections of the MoMA Artist Book Collection and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. This is the first time his work has been featured at Collectors' Night.

Riley Goodman, raised in the Patapsco River Valley of Maryland, inquires folklore, American history, and humankind's relation to the environments they inhabit in an effort to understand what endures, and how this manifests through the passage of time. Informed by the compositional styles of cinema and painting, Riley weaves a vast visual narrative inspired by everything from historical accounts and folk-based storytelling to dreams and familial legends. Riley's work presents an ever-occurring understanding of history, establishing a crafted world that invites the viewer to question tenets of authenticity, leaving the idea of truth versus myth in an undisclosed middle ground.