Grant Levy-Lucero

Chapel Viewing Room

Night Gallery is pleased to present Grant Knits, a presentation of new works by Grant Levy-Lucero. This is the artist's third solo exhibition with the gallery, following Central (2017) and Reflections (2021).

In Grant Levy-Lucero's new works for Grant Knits, the artist returns to his original medium: textiles. Known primarily for his pop-arty, hand-sculpted ceramic reclamations of brand logos, Los Angeles iconography, and hand-painted advertisements, Levy-Lucero shows knit works in a gallery space for the first time. Through a return to textiles, Levy-Lucero reclaims his relationship to the form, which, in the past, resulted in clothing--first designed by himself then, later, by others.

As always, Levy-Lucero's work references other artists: this time Vincent Van Gogh, James Brown, Looney Tunes, and his own former work as a graffiti artist with the tag PLEASE. Alongside knitted replicas of Van Gogh's Vase of Ten Sunflowers and Vase with Poppies, Levy-Lucero exhibits an overturned vessel of XXX-style poison in Old Faithful (all works 2025), a stitched cigarette in an ashtray for Last One, and an inside joke piece entitled HEY NOW which, in italic script, references a funny bit from The Larry Sanders Show. At once playful and meticulous, Levy-Lucero invites his viewers to "sink their teeth in" as they relate their own histories to the iconography within the work, to interpret each piece as a painting as much as a textile art.

On process, Levy-Lucero notes the similarities between knitted works and ceramics--how they both start with a base and materialize upward, how neither can be stopped midway through creation. He also notes their concomitant emergence within human history, how vessels for containment aligned with the invention of textiles and their utility for warmth. And, just as importantly, both forms necessitate the intimate work of hands. In one light, Levy-Lucero's practice can be interpreted as breaking down mass-produced, replicable images into hand-crafted singularities. In another light, we get the reverse, as when Van Gogh's paintings are deconstructed into pixels, each easily reproduced by the blueprint of a pattern.

While Levy-Lucero works with common forms, they arrive singularly unique, unmistakably identifiable as being the artist's own. As with the ceramics that led to Levy-Lucero's notoriety, the artist's knits signify our shared late-capitalist zeitgeist through recognizable pop culture and commercial iconography, ever inviting viewers to find joy as they reorient their relationships to familiarity and commerce.

Grant Levy-Lucero (b. 1981, Los Angeles, CA) has had solo exhibitions at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong; White Columns, New York, NY; VNH Gallery, Paris, France; and Henry Taylor's, Los Angeles, CA. His work has been featured in group shows at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA; Arsenal, New York, NY; Gana Art, Seoul, Korea; Musee des Arts decoratifs de Paris, Paris, France; Gagosian Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland; and Sans Titre, Paris, France, among others. He collaborated with Acne Studios on the 2021 Fall/Winter collection and the 2019 Grant Levy-Lucero x Acne Studios collection. Levy-Lucero lives and works in Los Angeles.