Sky Riggs
murmurs
32 E Broadway, NYC
elevator access, 6fl
Sept 3rd - Oct 12th, 2025
Thur-Sun 12-6
Reception: Sept 3rd 6-8
Melodies, automatic singing, painting off-handed. Decoding distraction. Searching for a whisper. Looking away. Rolling up your gaze all the way up, off the page. Techniques to pattern detachment, to hold mystery, to speak on an ultraviolet level. It's all the way inside now. It's forgotten, or emotion is left, faces
are exhumed, narrative drips in from process. The space is inhabited.
- Sky Riggs
(b.1983 ) Sky Riggs lives in the east village and works in Brooklyn, NY. Receiving an MFA from Columbia in 2018. Exploring the act of painting as much as the idea of an image. We present a selection of primal, subliminally determined, entropic works. Infused with emotionally linked, full spectrum color
palettes. Comprised of subconscious one-shot gestures, daily-life interpretations distilled with fragments of dream-life remembrances faintly grasped, then splashed onto the physical plane with musically
charged tonalities. Raised in a typical American household, where art wasn't considered a profession, Riggs found himself doodling comic book characters in the margins of his homework An impulse which remained
throughout his early years. Come the mid 00’s that creative energy morphed into the formation of musical groups. Riggs in his 20’s composed and performed with (28 Mansions, Moses, Cries Tiger, Kent Odessa, Brian Tan). Later, through his formal education of Mathematics/Econ double major, Knot Theory
was a primary focus. A visual proof-writing discipline, exploring knot-uniqueness in non-euclidean space. With a purely visual solution this led Riggs to draw knot adjustments over and over on the chalkboard. During this period, 2013 at age 30, Riggs enrolled in 3 visual arts classes, upon doing so it awakened a deep passion for engagement with visual arts. Riggs began painting on found signs, wood panels, found paintings, anything and everything he could get his hands on at the art supplies store. As serendipity would have it, Riggs would also meet his wife in that very same painting class.
So inspired in fact, Riggs would enroll in Columbia to accomplish his painting focused MFA completed in 2018. With the guidance and introduction to the NYC art world by his musical art friend Ross Simonini, Riggs developed his practice and painting style observing movements across painting.
Arriving at his own visual language, a style in conversation with elements of Peter Doig water treatments, Frank Auerbach landscapes, Laura Owens colors, Shara Hughes fantasies. Riggs’ practice represents an
individual's discovery of self expression, interweaved spirit, and understandings amidst the empirical facts of his mathematical and family focused life. To aid him in his creative liberation, Riggs has devised a series of what he calls distraction-activities to compel ways of less-known, flow state, mark making.
Engaging his natural intuition, opening a door for moments of discovery. Listening to the melodies in his head, guiding the next painterly choice.
Charmoli Ciarmoli pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Sky Riggs: murmurs. A selection of 8 paintings accomplished from 2023-2025, at 32 E Broadway, Downtown NYC, Sept 3rd - Oct 12th.
We invite you to join us for the opening reception Sept 3rd 6-8pm.