ruined on a riverbank

Hamiltonian Artists is pleased to present Joey Enríquez’s solo show ruined on a riverbank, a site-specific installation comprising sculptural brick arrangements, raw-earth paintings, and topographical histories of Washington, DC. The artist uses bricks to convey the fragments of history that piece together contemporary realities, such as gentrification, access, displacement, and geographic infrastructure. Their practice of running along the Potomac River corridor in DC and collecting derelict bricks confronts ideas of labor and migration. Enríquez explains, “I construct objects, half-architecture–half-ruin, using these neglected building blocks that entrap trash, detritus, urban material, and our own context, to frame and attempt to reconcile histories of those that have lived and worked in the District for decades.” Historic remnants become recycled back into construction material.

The exhibition includes three site-specific sculptures made from found bricks and other discarded materials once belonging to long-forgotten domestic and commercial structures; paintings made using materials sourced from the earth such as mud, silt, and dust; brick casts made of plaster; and reproductions of archival technical drawings of DC neighborhoods annotated by the artist to reference what once was and now is.

Artist

Joey Enríquez earned their MFA in Fine Arts from the George Washington University, Washington, DC (2020), and BA in Art–Design from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA (2018).