Working in the space between figuration and abstraction, mosie river (b. 1994) uses painting as a portal through which to explore themes of self-perception and polychronic time. A worldbuilder informed by a background in set design and puppetry, romney stages fantasy worlds which disrupt our notions of nostalgia, memory, the archive, time, the past and the present. Recontextualizing images from a multitude of sources including family photo albums found on the internet, movie stills, literature, screen shots, dreams, and an evolving cast of characters continually recycled from previous works, romney tells stories of empowerment and explores life as a multi-performative experience. Using fantasy as a tool to grapple with realities of daily life, romney’s work conveys the emotional disposition of living in a society where contact across boundaries is constantly in variance. In their 2022 interview with Ben Fama in BOMB magazine, romney states “I’ve been thinking about visibility and its complications, the satisfaction and limited subjectivity of seeing and being seen.” romney received their BFA in Visual Art from SUNY Purchase in 2016 and have completed residencies with the Home School, Hudson, NY; Pocoapoco, Oaxaca City, MX; Painters Painting Paintings, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Mahler & LeWitt Studios, Spoleto, Italy, among others. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Pond Society, Shanghai, China; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China, among others. romney’s work has been included in exhibitions at White Columns, New York, NY; Nicodim, Bucharest, RO, Los Angeles, CA, and New York, NY; Greene Naftali, New York, NY; Gern en Regalia, New York, NY; Almine Rech, London, UK, and New York, NY; Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY, among others. Their work has been featured in articles in BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, T Magazine, and Juxtapoz, among others.