Museum Artwork @ Leku

The painting and sculptures below, selected by the museum's curatorial team, are on permanent display at the museum's restaurant and are accessible at all hours that the restaurant is open. The restaurant functions as an extension of the museum's current exhibitions as other artworks by these artists are visible inside the museum. 

The large-scale painting by Allison Zuckerman, Eternal Recurrence, was commissioned by the museum specifically for the restaurant's main dining room and is visible to all inside and outside the restaurant as well as guests in the museum's lobby. The painting contains hundreds of art historical references as well as elements from popular culture and thus provides a point of departure for myriad conversations amongst patrons. The exquisite and elaborate preparation and presentation of Leku's Basque cuisine mirrors Zuckerman's dramatic Baroque composition. 

Allison Zuckerman
b. 1990, Harrisburg, PA. Lives and works in New York, NY
Eternal Recurrence, 2019, acrylic, oil pastel, and CMYK ink on canvas, 60 x 285 in. (152.3 x 723.9 cm.)

Allison Zuckerman was selected as the Rubell Family Collection’s artist-in-residence for the summer of 2017, where she created twelve paintings in the span of eight weeks.

Zuckerman seeks to question the patriarchal history of art and representation of women. Her painting process begins with historical paintings of women by male artists as a point of departure. Her technique then involves combining digitally manipulated images with her own oil painting. She often includes pixilation, emojis, animation, and appropriates fragments from modern painters including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse as well as her own previous paintings. Zuckerman’s work seeks to both pivot from male classical painters in order to create a space for female painters, as well as comment on image alteration and mass circulation of media in today’s world.

This painting is an original interpretation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam which is painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We can instantly recognize what painting it references as Zuckerman retained the layout of the composition and the inclusion of some Renaissance figures and architecture. However, the painting is heavily altered in her recognizable style. She illustrates her own biblical creation narrative, and in addition to her stylistic changes the primary alteration is that she has transformed both God and Adam into women. This painting exemplifies how Zuckerman’s work is rooted in classical ideas of gender and beauty as well as the contemporary world of cosmetic and digital enhancements.

Mark Handforth
b. 1969, Hong Kong, China / lives and works in Miami, FL
Meter (Candles), 2004, Parking meter, steel pipe and candles, 59 x 7 1/2 x 5 3/4 in. (150 x 19 x 14.5 cm)

The candles are a way of keeping the static sculpture alive, of not giving in to the monument but somehow maintaining the creative process; of keeping it all fluid, rolling, open. By handing over the essential creative gesture -- I hoped to throw it open; there is no particular end and no particular destination. At the same time, by virtue of the meaning and function of those materials, the piece inevitably becomes a strange kind of monument; all that molten wax, all that fluidity, hardens into the floor and locks the moment in time, buries it.
-Mark Handforth

Thomas Schütte
b. 1954, Oldenburg, Germany / lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany
Bronze Woman No. 15, 2004, Bronze figure on steel table, 86 x 99 x 49 in. (218 2/5 x 251 1/2 x 124 1/2 cm), footprint 8 1/4 x 4 ft., acquired in 2004