Casey Kaplan
The Unsettling Embrace of Hannah Levy
by Meka Boyle | March 28, 2025
Ripe and bulbous, or spiky and penetrative, Hannah Levy’s works exist in a state of tension. Silicone is stretched, continuously; glass is frozen in time; metal acts as a support or a directional vector. The works continue to evolve once on display: they accumulate dust and residue through touch, their physicality mediated by their environment. Levy likens this to sweaty skin sticking to a leather car seat on a hot day.
Some of her works look like they are about to ricochet across the room. Sometimes they do – worn by dancers as appendages. In 2023, at ICA Philadelphia, Sigrid Lauren activated Levy’s sculptures with choreography, the performers balancing on metal stilts with talons. In a 2017 performance at MoMA PS1, dancers wore cumbersome silicone and latex costumes, and jackets with extra-long arms.
But even without the dancers, in Levy’s hands things – floor lamps, chandeliers, chairs, umbrellas, handrails – all teeter on the verge of animation. Organic forms materialize: a super-sized peach pit or a giant piece of floppy asparagus. Object as subject, form over function, industrial versus organic: binaries collapse under Levy’s deft touch. Rather than working from drawings, the artist begins with a small set of images that she collages together into something entirely new. ‘If I were to show you my desktop right now, it’s a jumble of images I’ve collected,’ she says. ‘A weird desk, a chrysalis and a ladder.’
Her sculptural pieces are the result of an idiosyncratic combination of fabrication practices and traditional craftsmanship, from glass blowing to welding. Generally, Levy combines two materials and uses their interactions as the point of push and pull that energizes the work. For her upcoming presentation with Casey Kaplan at Frieze New York (her first ever solo stand), Levy’s sculptures cling to the walls in suspense, teasing gravity.
Casey Kaplan is presenting a solo stand of Hannah Levy at Frieze New York 2025 (Stand B11).