VNH Gallery is delighted to announce the solo exhibition of the artist Grant Levy-Lucero titled «Périphérique» (September 6 – 22, 2018) in our Project space.
“Reyner Banham said of Los Angeles that it is bereft of “all the rules for ‘civilized living’ as they have been understood by the pundits of modernity.” It has been within international society’s collective awareness that LA is a metropolis less refined than some. Grant Levy-Lucero’s oeuvre has come to embody the contemporary, unique spirit of LA; his painting
style celebrates the hand-painted brand logo signs that he grew up seeing, while his forms make reference to antiquity and tradition. He, like his native city, acknowledges other art worlds and histories, but chooses to emphasize a subject matter that is more temporally untethered.
Known for his explication of the evolving language in everyday iconography, Levy-Lucero takes up a cross-cultural dialectic in this new body of work. Périphérique tells the familiar story of an American artist in Paris; on the periphery of the city and as a temporary expat, he expands himself through didactic high culture. Not one for cliché, Levy-Lucero
acknowledges this tradition and utilizes humor and attention to detail to create a new rendition. In a type of reverse diaspora, the artist inserts back into French culture that which it is not even aware it has created—the external perception of Paris which has been leveraged by consumerism with products such as Orangina and Chanel No. 5.
Levy-Lucero compiles, in each of his pieces, imagery—what Jasper Johns has called “things the mind already knows”— that specifically indicate a collective unconscious. These pop culture signifiers become, in the artist’s assertion, the semiotics that bond any community or nation; he is dealing in what defines our idea of “place”. In an expansion of
this idea, he tests the limits to understanding that are inherent in all forms of communication: examining where—both spatially, from one country to another, and as a figure of speech—meaning gives way to assumption and where assumption, subsequently, becomes misconception.”
– Christie Hayden
Grant Levy Lucero, “Périphérique” September 6 – 22, 2018
VNH GALLERY
108 rue Vieille du Temple
75003 Paris
France
Grant Levy-Lucero was born in Los Angeles (USA) in 1981.
He currently lives and works in Los Angeles (USA).
General enquiries: [email protected]
Press enquiries: [email protected]
Writing via press release and photographs provided by the gallery.
