Duke Riley Tides and Transgressions

The first survey of the twenty-plus-year career of the highly influential multimedia artist Duke Riley, famous for expressing transgressive political and ecological themes through metaphors drawn from nautical folklore and nature.

Duke Riley’s work explores his lifelong fascination with urban waterways, their historical relationship to the culture of life at sea, and the uneasy intersections of human geography with the physical world. His work comments on a range of issues, from the cultural impact of overdevelopment and environmental destruction of waterfront communities to contradictions within political ideologies and the role of the artist in society. This comprehensive monograph collects work from his expansive career, encompassing drawings, sculptures, mosaics, performances, and more than one maritime adventure, including his Fly by Night public art project of pigeons illuminated by LED lights flying across the New York City skyline, documentation of his nefarious shell company Non-Essential Consultants, and the mayhem of the 2009 anarchic mock Roman naval battle, Those About to Die Salute You at the Queens Museum.

Duke Riley is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Anne Pasternak is the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum. Meredith Johnson is the vice president of arts and culture and head curator at the Trust for Governors Island.