Rebecca Riess

Rebecca Riess’s candy-colored paintings radiate playfulness, but beneath the vivid surfaces lies a searing critique of modern life. Her work addresses environmental collapse, capitalism’s moral failures, and authoritarianism—filtered through a lens shaped by personal trauma and global unease, including the war in Ukraine. Toy-like forms, synthetic palettes, and exaggerated motifs conjure innocence, only to be undermined by undercurrents of menace and ruin. This tension defines Riess’s practice: funhouse aesthetics masking a vision of dystopia.