Laylah Ali & Kenny Rivero: Two Truths Exhibit at Esther Massry Gallery with Reception January 24

The College of St. Rose’s Massry Center for the Arts is hosting an exhibit about how truth can be related to perspective. Artists Laylah Ali and Kenny Rivero are part of an exhibit that opens January 24th.

How is truth woven into the narratives we tell ourselves and each other? Within our current socio-political climate, teasing out the thread of truth can be elusive. It’s tempting to dismiss a story or perception when the pattern doesn’t match our own.

While both Laylah Ali and Kenny Rivero take on the more malignant, messy, and painful facets of the human condition, they do so in markedly different ways. Where Rivero’s paintings are dark and gestural, Ali’s are bright and clinically precise. Where Rivero uses paint to allude to what we can’t see within the picture frame, Ali describes a contained theatrical event whose exactitude belies the complicated pathos within.

Painting has long been an endeavor that renders both truth and illusion in the same plane. In Two Truths we see both truth and illusion deployed in complex arrays that are personally resonant and collectively shared.

Artist reception is Friday, January 24, 5 to 7 p.m at the Esther Massry Gallery, 1002 Madison Avenue in Albany. Artist talk will follow at 7 pm in the Picotte Recital Hall at the Massry Center for the Arts.

This event is free and open to the public. More information can be found at this link.