Kenny Rivero’s latest preview of his work caught my attention at NADA

Kenny Rivero

Morning Shift, 2025

Oil on linen over panel 

8 x8 inches

By AMANDA WALL January 27th, 2026

Kenny Rivero’s latest preview of his work caught my attention at NADA [New Art Dealer Alliance] during Art Miami 2025, proof that bigger is not better. Obsessed about one small Rivero painting, Morning Shift, I was compelled to see the entire exhibition, Ash on Everything, at Charles Moffett Gallery. I finally understand how a collector falls in love with a work of art. It hits differently than the perspective of an admiring artist. The prices are strategically high enough to communicate that Rivero is established and positioned as a top contemporary contender. Initial sales were strong at NADA before Ash On Everything in New York. Both times, I visited the gallery, I noticed artists, in painted studio attire, intently studying Rivero’s methods. A random artist and I were fixated, showing signs of technical worship, on a particular detail in Sub Maintenance, a melting, ghostly figure with sunken eyes and sacred importance within the composition. Being marked -a painter’s painter- is passing a test that can reflect an artist’s career longevity. Rivero’s credibility extends to academia, as a Professor at Columbia University. Apparently, his most academic trait is being ambiguous when explaining his work, which comes as no surprise as you attempt to unpack the obvious symbolism juxtaposed with a complex ethos. 

One can imagine the second generation, Dominican American boy who grew up in Washington Heights, in the 80s and 90s, creating imaginary universes while playing in abandoned urban buildings, manifesting his bright future. At first glance: an adolescent with a skeletal death mask, a young man with a Charlie Brown ghost mask, a dark figure with third eyes, and a bust with a third eye flame are perceived psychological self portraits. Rather the titles Portrait as a Self, I’m Missing, Light Work, Shadow Mirror and Morning Shift allude to psychological states, psychic shifts and Jungian archetypes. Rivero is combining psychology, spirituality and quantum physics through the language of culturally specific Dominican New Yorker symbolism: the coconut, the urban landscape, air planes, cigars, baseball mitts, high top sneakers, handball courts, dominos, a blue Caribbean ocean, a Ferrari and a hot girl, and possibly faded memories of Catholicism or an early reference for spirituality. The Navigator confronts you with her powerful gaze from a helmet-like mask, cigar in well manicured hand. She’s dominant and literally plugged-in, like the Taíno goddess Atabey, a source of wisdom, strength and balance.

Kenny Rivero 

Navigator, 2025

Oil on linen

70 x 70 inches

Rivero creates space and dimension simply with clean lines, like Matisse’s The Red Studio. The ambiguity of time and space teleports to an imagined dimension both real and unreal. Thoughts create alternate realities. The erosion and erasure in Shadow Mirror, similar to Mark Bradford’s process, is an articulation of Jungian shadow theory. Carl Jung explained, “the archetypes exist in a psychic system of a collective, universal and impersonal nature”. Rivero is giving us relatable collective states of consciousness, not an autobiographical account of events. Quantum physics ontology, in agreement with Jung, hypothesizes the existence of an invisible realm of non material forms that form a realm of potentiality in the physical reality. 

Social media and now AI, brought the language of quantum physics, mixed with eastern philosophy, out of the academic vault, integrating it with pop culture. Now everyone can manifest their dreams by thinking positive thoughts. The pro being access for all, I won’t advocate fast philosophy or American pop culture’s colonization and Home Depot gilding, of Jung, eastern theologies or science. Rivero’s work seems to embody the sophisticated and authentic version. Fine art MFA programs encourage ideas of interconnectedness or collective consciousness but fail to dive deeper into quantum and Jungian theory. Going down a rabbit hole about quantum physics and consciousness, it’s clear the scientific community is still debating on its connection, as quantum physics borders on mysticism (vibration, energy, frequency, wave function) rather than mathematical certainty and clear evidence. But this is art, there is no correct answer or single answer. 

Rivero invents a thread of shared interconnectivity with the metaphorical note. The notes are tied to figures or tucked into objects. Otherwise, they exist as a close up of the unfolded notes. There is no revelation of meaning, having access to the transcribed scribbles on the notes. Decoding them is a challenge, although some are clearly a cryptic record of a thought, feeling or memory. The archival nature, the keeping and holding of the notes, from painting to painting reveals sentimental attachment. Writing a note on paper rewires nostalgia in an age of recording everything on smartphones. Recurring numbers and symbolic patterns are telepathic, connecting dots.  

More complex symbolism evolves from his fore-thoughts or notes. Flames of textured precision disrupt still moments with alarming 911, trauma: the lit coconut bomb, the woman unshackled; but burning, and the car on fire; but night is red. Additionally, the light bulbs of revelation, the consistent masking of identity, the cigarettes, cigars and heavy smoke all create worlds that insight familiarity and lived experience felt by the artist, while being absorbed by the audience. You can smell the smoke, feel a presence, but you don’t know where you are. It's disorienting and disconcerting, both real and unreal. Intellectually and spiritually, existing between life and death, between timelines accompanied by the presence of energy rather than physical bodies/objects in the physical realm, is what attracts the most to Rivero’s work. 

You have to look at the entire collection as one. Separation from the collective will likely dilute the connotation of a work, but how interesting. As enigmatic and small scale as Morning Shift was at NADA, exposed to a long week of visual noise (Beeple’s elites on all fours, although interesting, a gimmicky distraction), the painting didn’t just catch my eye. It gave me hope for contemporary art and galleries that have a great eye and their finger on the pulse. 

Kenny Rivero 

 Sub Maintenance (red shadow), 2025

Oil on canvas 

60 x 70 inches