Gesture as a Muse: Riad Miah at Freight + Volume Project Space

It Makes You Go Whooh, 2024, oil on canvas over panel construction, 
56h x 69w in / 142.3h x 175.3w cm

By ANNA SHUKEYLO December 24th, 2025

F+V Project Space, part of Freight and Volume gallery, is featuring “Is it Tomorrow (Or Just the End of Time),” a solo expose of Riad Miah’s latest works that continue his decades-long exploration of gesture, on view October 18, 2025 through January 3, 2026. The project space room is a smaller room set apart from the main gallery, with one brick wall. The show consists of four moderately sized canvases, irregular in proportion and shape, all tantalizing with color and sumptuous surfaces.

It Makes You Go Whooh is a dominating piece in the show, and perhaps the largest, spanning 69 inches at its longest dimension. It appears as if the work consists of multiple adjoined panels but its irregular shape and painted forms trick the eye with these forms optically floating back and forth. Complimentary color combinations of orange and purple create a tension; the movement creates rhythm, and the whole piece reads like a musical composition. This synesthetic effect is breathtaking, and speaks directly to the title of the piece that was inspired by a conversation Miah had as a student at SVA with his professor Mary Heilmann: specifically, when he inquired about the complex  meaning of transcendence and, in his own words, “her answer was characteristically unexpected and deceptively simple: “It’s when you look at something and it makes you go ‘whooooh’” (Riad Miah for Whitehot Magazine, Aug 12, 2025).

Once Upon a Time a Rectangle Felt Depressed, 2025, oil on canvas over gatorboard, 22h x 30w in / 55.9h x 76.2w cm

Miah liberates  gestures from the boundaries of the canvas, allowing the fluid energy of his surface to transcend the confines of the picture plane. Miah’s perpensity for taking viewers beyond a brush stroke, sets the artist’s work apart from more traditional abstraction. Riad Miah is a master of illusion, as his picture planes are deep and often appear three dimensional. The paintings have a physicality to them, ranging from thick sculptural paint, to slick nearly reflective, lacquered surface. The works are playful and have tongue-in-cheek titles that complement their mood.  In his painting Once Upon a Time a Rectangle Felt Depressed, a fat bread-like rectangle swells beyond the raw classic canvas. The color plays a vital role in the harmony and the drama within his works. Deeply inspired by Matisse, Miah creates glowing shapes using complimentary combinations such as neon green strokes to appear floating on yellow orange field of color. Matisse’s cutouts in particular resonate in the repeated shapes, although Miah’s approach is different.  The paint is fluid, and appears without individual brushstrokes. The gestural brushstrokes are the subject of the work, not just the evidence of the process of painting.  His understanding of viscosity and malleability of paint yields surreal surfaces beyond traditional definition of oil painting.

Riad Miah pushes the boundaries of paint materiality, exploring the dynamics of different textures. In In and Out the range of textures is impressive, ranging from glassy smooth to He treats the canvas not as a flat field but as a site for experimentation that yields controlled chaos. Miah carefully selects color combinations to reflect the melodrama in the work. His openness to experimentation comes from his artistic foundation built upon a diverse and potent lineage. He is significantly influenced by the structural variations of David Reed’s work, who explores the sensual possibilities of the brushstroke. In particular, Miah is inspired by looking at gesture as its own subject.

Reflections, 2025, oil on canvas over panel construction, 44h x 54w in / 111.8h x 137.2w cm

Within the calmest work in the show, Reflections, which seems loosely based on imagery of deep waters or the night sky, there is a subconscious homage to William De Kooning’s paintings from the mid 1970s. There is a commonality in the work focused on immersive gestural abstraction. Miah is also keenly in tune with his contemporaries like Katherine Bradford, who happens to have a show across the street at Canada Gallery. Both artists are subtle and mysterious in their references, but their use of color is bold and progressive.  Miah’s empowering chromatic relationships that feel simultaneously casual and deeply considered, stem from his extensive knowledge of color theory and study of abstract expressionism, color field, and related historic periods of painting. He engages in exploration of rudimentary and unexpected shapes to structure his compositions. Most crucially, he assimilates the gestural paint strokes inherited from De Kooning’s raw energy and Reed’s extended, fluid marks, adapting them into a personal vocabulary.

In and Out, 2024, oil on canvas over panel construction, 42h x 30w in / 106.7h x 76.2w cm

Miah’s studio is situated in the heart of Lower East Side, right off of Houston Street. Aside from dramtic demographic and cultural changes in last decade, the neighborhood maintains an historically rich confluence of galleries, artist-run spaces, ever changing urban landscape, and diverse cultural energy. Having lived in New York for more than 23 years, Miah possesses a deep, enduring connection to the city's heartbeat, which inspires his work and the pursuit of organized chaos.  Miah is also a musician, with decades experience playing guitar. The rhythm and structure of rock music is evident in several pieces in the show, particularly in In and Out and It Makes You Go Whooh.  He captures the intangible buzz of the city’s vibe and energy with unmistakable verisimilitude.

Miah’s unique voice comes from a complex amalgamation of painting traditional influences, contemporary painting, musical refences, and his love for the material and color. The work is hard to simply describe in words, and can only be truly understood in person. 

Riad Miah: Is it Tomorrow (Or Just the End of Time)

In the F+V project space

October 18, 2025 – January 3, 2026