Biography

My work investigates how actions are translated through material and how perception is shaped through direct engagement with form. Working primarily with wood, metal, and plaster, I approach sculpture as a sequence of measured decisions—cutting, stacking, suspending, compressing—carried out through materials that respond differently to the same set of actions. Earlier interior works, including suspended and hanging pieces often explore states of attention and awareness through balance, opposition, and subtle shifts in orientation. These sculptures do not illustrate mental states but create conditions for them, using weight, tension, and spatial relationships to slow perception and heighten presence. Across my practice, sculpture functions as both structure and record—evidence of how material, action, and perception negotiate with one another. The work invites sustained attention, not through representation, but through the physical logic of how objects are made and experienced.

Riefe was born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1991, and currently living in his hometown. He attended the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art, Washington University, in St. Louis (MFA Fellow, 2017) and studied at the University of Northern Iowa (BFA, Art History and Sculpture, 2014). Since then, he has been group exhibitions at the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, and in outdoor shows in Knoxville, Tennessee; Hutchinson Kansas; Mankato, Minnesota; Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Riefe has public sculptures in the collections of Fort Dodge, IA (2021), Hutchinson, KS (2021), Lakewood, MN (2019), Iowa State University (2018), Minnesota State University (2018), Laneken, Belgium (2018), Cedar Falls, IA (2017) Rock Island, IL (2016), and Sioux City, IA (2016)