2018 - Practice Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Present Whereabouts stems from basic assumptions that things are rarely as they seem, and that the stories we have been told are largely concoctions of half-truths and snake oil. As unhinged billionaires write the dominant narratives of a techno-spiritual age, it becomes convenient to believe that they are the latter day messiahs, and we are indeed in need of saving.
Engaging playfully with materiality and historicity, Ricciuto creates objects and experimental sites that expose both the subversive qualities and escapist tendencies of fiction. These works seek to uncover and reinterpret motives for operating in the margins, and consider the ways that material contingencies can reflect ideas of otherness.
Drawing on sci-fi imagery, countercultural narratives and outsider ideologies, Present Whereabouts explores the potential of delusion and speculation in opening up spaces that conspicuously resist simple classification, and promote unfamiliar kinds of empathy.