January 7 to February 5, 2012
165 Orchard Street, between Rivington and Stanton streets
New York City, (917) 721 4539

Leor Grady’s solo exhibition at Y Gallery’s intimate Project Room features sculpture, painting, and 2-dimensional works on fabric and paper. Titled “Objects of Affection,” the installation moves between metaphor and symbolism in tones of white and gold. All works were made by hand, a point that underscores the meditative quality of Grady’s practice.

In one key piece, the famous phrase of Hillel’s, “If I’m not for myself, who will be?”  is embroidered in Hebrew characters on a man’s handkerchief. Their spacing is such that the quote might also read as “Without a mother, who will be for me?”.

The single painting in the show is dominated by an amorphous pool of gold enamel that signifies, for the artist, the shimmering surface of the Sea of Galilee. The painting’s motif resonates with an out-sized, gold-painted paper boat nearby, positioned so as to list downward on the gallery’s blind stair. Sagging under its own weight, imperfections at the structural folds add to its poignant condition.

By contrast, the geometry of a concrete “house” on wheels is authoritatively correct. A dense cube topped by a separately cast triangular solid, its diminutive size and reductive form initially suggest the fantasy of stability and safety that a house represents. But inevitably, this work takes on a more specific allusion to the dilemma of settlements on land disputed by Palestine and Israel, partly through the work’s implacable yet moveable aspect, but also because of its proximity to Grady’s embroidered maps of the Dead Sea. In these works on paper, mirrored forms face each other with lashed and dangling threads, knots, and needle-holes. Endlessly combative, warlike and intimate, this is embroidery as existentialism. “If I am not for myself….”

Meanwhile, pillows stacked within a gallery niche simultaneously contrast with the concrete house and connect with the wilting boat. Creating a wall, they block the Project Space’s street entrance and instigate richly contradictory references – to sand bags, bedding, dreams, sexual innuendo. If a military theme lurks within this show, the pillows complicate matters in concert with other works’ allusions to deep time and questions of selfhood.

Grady, who was born in Israel to Yemeni parents, has been New York-based since 1996. As this solo installation and his participation in recent group shows suggests, his approach to conceptual art relates to that of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Zoe Leonard, and Barbara Bloom. Respecting the differences between these artists, a common thread grounds their emphasis on the personal and the political, which unmistakably relates to social activism, yet leaves the viewer utterly free of didacticism.

Grady’s practice also resonates with Gedi Sibony’s in its subtlety and veiled political content. But whereas Sibony is ingeniously subversive, Grady is emotionally engaging, even endearing. One of the most interesting things about “Objects of Affection” is the way Grady’s installation gains momentum toward collective meaning, delivering a velvet punch that is simultaneously forthright and poetically confrontational.

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Lush Life is an exhibition curated by Franklin Evans and Omar Lopez-Chahoud which takes place at nine Lower East Side (LES) galleries: Collette Blanchard Gallery, Eleven Rivington, Invisible-Exports, Lehmann Maupin, On Stellar Rays, Salon 94, Scaramouche, Sue Scott Gallery, and Y Gallery.  Lush Life adopts Richard Price’s 2008 novel to title and organize the exhibition.  The novel is set in the contemporary LES and through a murder investigation exposes the dynamically changing community of the neighborhood, which despite its evolution retains a ghostly and vital link to its layered past.  The deep and varied history of the LES now includes the LES galleries as new community members, and the premise of community is reflected in the cooperative nature of the galleries’ and artists’ participation in the exhibition which uses Price’s novel to critically consider concepts of neighborhood and change.  Each gallery will be a sub-exhibition reflecting the idea of one of the nine chapters in the book.

Sue Scott Gallery – Chapter One: Whistle.  June 19 to July 31
On Stellar Rays – Chapter Two: Liar. June 23 to August 3
Invisible-Exports – Chapter Three: First Bird (A Few Butterflies). June 25 to July 31
Lehmann Maupin – Chapter Four: Let It Die. July 8 to August 13
Y Gallery – Chapter Five: Want Cards. July 8 to July 25
Collette Blanchard Gallery – Chapter Six: The Devil You Know
Salon 94 – Chapter Seven: Wolf Tickets. June 29 to July 30
Scaramouche – Chapter Eight: 17 Plus 25 Is 32. July 8 to August 7
Eleven Rivington – Chapter Nine: She’ll Be Apples

Artists: Christopher Drager, Claudia Weber, Coco Fusco, Dana Frankfort, Dana Levy, Dani Leventhal, David Shapiro, Derrick Adams, Elisabeth Subrin, Erik Benson, Ezra Johnson, Ishmael Randall Weeks, Jackie Gendel, Jackie Saccoccio, Jayson Keeling, Jessica Dickinson, Joanne Greenbaum, Jose Lerma, Judi Werthein, Justen Ladda, Kai Schiemenz/ Iris Fluegel, Karina Skvirsky, La Toya Fraizer, Leslie Hewitt, Manuel Acevedo, Mario Ybarra Jr, Matthew Weinstein, Melissa Gordon, Nana Debois Buhl, Nicolas Di Genova, Nina Lola Bachhuber, Oliver Babin, Patrick Lee, Paul Gabrielli, Paul Pagk, Robert Beck, Robert Melee, Rudy Shepherd, Scott Hug, Tim Davis, Tommy Hartung, Xaviera Simmons, among others.

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