Harper’s is pleased to announce a brief history of sculpture and other cookie-related artworks, Los Angeles-based artist Grant Levy-Lucero’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features new ceramic works by Levy-Lucero and opens Saturday, June 29, 6–8pm with a reception attended by the artist.
Throughout a brief history of sculpture and other cookie-related artworks, Levy-Lucero appropriates the formal qualities of a cookie jar as a vessel from which to examine the history of sculpture. The exhibition takes a probing look at the fundamental sculptural works in art history, from the towering moai sculptures of Easter Island to Constantin Brâncuși’s The Kiss. By transforming these canonical works into cookie jar-inspired sculptures, Levy-Lucero confronts critical questions of value, function, and by extension, labor within the history of art.
These analytical motifs continue to examine themes posed in a recent body of work in which the artist adorned ceramic vessels inspired by Greco-Roman amphorae with the flashy graphics found in advertisements. Ultimately, however, this new exhibition marks a formal departure from Levy-Lucero’s previous sculptures. Here, with a studied eye, the artist embarks on an aesthetic investigation of the tenets of the discipline at large. In doing so, the artist pokes holes in art history’s imaginaries of appraisal as he reinterprets and satirizes the sculptural canon.
In this sweeping survey of the medium, Levy-Lucero adapts his cheeky visual language to fit the constraints of a range of aesthetic periods spanning the ancient works of the Mamluk Period in the eleventh century to the post-modern flair of twenty-first-century styles. Together, the works transport viewers across time: the artist annotates the bounds of visual cultural periodization itself. In Dave, for example, Levy-Lucero mines the lineage of Italian Renaissance sculpture. The artist reimagines Michaelangelo’s masterpiece, David, inspired by the titular biblical character, into a more humble depiction of the masculine form.
With exacting precision, Michaelango chiseled Carrara marble into the perfect man in the original David—a symbol of the model Roman citizen in the wake of modernity. But Levy-Lucero’s take on David dispels this myth of corporeal excellence. Leaning into the textural nuances of the medium, the artist’s ceramic iteration reveals his hand, recalling folkloric expressions in sculpture. The resultant work shatters the illusion of civic purity with its gingerly calloused finish: Levy-Lucero succeeds in reinventing the larger-than-life figure into an approachable subject.
Ultimately, throughout a brief history of sculpture and other cookie-related artworks, Levy-Lucero is adept at humanizing the great wonders of sculptural history. We witness this tendency to secularize the hallmarks of sculptural prowess again in Stone Head, wherein, Levy-Lucero replicates the colossal Olmec heads of ancient Mesoamerica. Here, the artist beckons the viewer to take a closer look at the commandeering sculpture, which traditionally hovers over the onlooker like a guard. Taking the form of an abridged bust, at this scale, the viewer is face to face with an ominous disposition, provoking interior reflection within the observer. It is this intimacy between the artwork and the viewer that Levy-Lucero wields so tactfully throughout. The artist demystifies the awe-inspiring creations of generations prior by manipulating scale and form. Manifesting the spirit of the cookie jar, Levy-Lucero metaphorically ushers these coveted works out of the barricades of sacred viewership and into more familiar and relational landscapes.
Grant Levy-Lucero (b. 1981, Los Angeles, CA) participated in artist residencies at Château du Marais, Le Val-Saint-Germain, FR in 2020, and Lefebvre et Fils, Versailles in 2018. Most recently, Levy-Lucero’s work was the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2024, 2021, and 2017); WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong (2021); Edward Ressle Gallery, Shanghai (2021); and White Columns, New York (2019). Reviews of his work have appeared in T Magazine, Artillery Magazine, and Office Magazine, among other publications. Levy-Lucero currently lives and works in Los Angeles.