"There’s power in turning things over or inside out, to reconstituting the world through your specific lens, to diffusing power where there shouldn’t be, and embedding power where it should. Kenny Rivero’s paintings have this charge; they work like talismans that carry the visible and invisible aspects of his experience. Rivero creates a lexicon wherein beliefs are suspended in map-like street scenes, iconic superheroes, symbolic letters, and statistics. It feels important that his paintings resist hyper-realness, that what has empowered these works remains fuzzy, half-there, seemingly in a dream state. There’s magic in allowing the feelings that got you there—love, grief, fear, hope, and longing—to propose and instigate a way forward with wit and grace."