Casey Kaplan
WHAT TO SEE RIGHT NOW IN NEW YORK ART GALLERIES
12 February 2020
Hannah Levy
An oversize pinkish asparagus drooping over a nickel-plated sconce ought to be funny. And the young New York sculptor Hannah Levy’s new show at Casey Kaplan, “Pendulous Picnic,” has half a dozen of them, as well as several larger pieces that also revolve around the uncomfortable contrast of silicone and steel. There are three large chandelier-like forms made of curvy bars ending in points or skeletal hands. One is draped with casts of little squashes; another, girdled in a taut membrane with the texture of ostrich skin; a third filled with a single, multipart inflatable cushion.
The cushion’s gaskets are pink, like nipples, and the phallic little squash have enough bumps to evoke a life of sexual excess. There’s also an unusable trampoline — the frame’s legs press right up into the middle of the membrane. None of this is quite funny, but that’s what makes it compelling. It’s not grotesque, either, and it’s certainly not sexy. Instead, it’s a treatment of sexuality so dispassionate as to be nearly inhuman, which is genuinely perspective altering. It feels like stumbling into the laboratory of some extraterrestrial research ship.
– Will Heinrich