Primary is pleased to present Of Ivory and Flesh, a solo exhibition by Luna Palazzolo-Daboul, opening Saturday, September 19, 2026, at 6 PM. Bringing together new sculptures composed of galvanized pipe and hand-cast cement beads, the exhibition considers the uncertain distance between object and body, structure and surrender, gravity and grace.
The exhibition takes its title from Ovid's Metamorphoses and the story of Pygmalion, who falls in love with a figure he has carved from ivory. Under his touch, the distinction between material and flesh begins to dissolve. Palazzolo-Daboul begins at this threshold but resists the transformation. Her interest lies not in stone becoming human, but in the distance that remains—and in the desire, tenderness, and projection gathered there.
Galvanized pipe forms the armature of the sculptures: rigid frameworks that function as skeletons and systems of support. More than 40,000 individually cast cement beads gather across them, draping, sagging, and yielding to their collective weight. One material carries; the other yields. Together, they resemble bodies without ever becoming them.
Throughout her practice, Palazzolo-Daboul places materials associated with permanence, utility, and authority—cement, brick, and steel—in relation to forms that suggest care, devotion, ornament, and vulnerability. Here, those distinctions become unstable. Cement behaves like textile. Ornament becomes architecture. A structure takes on the presence of a body. To support is also to receive.
The exhibition also draws upon Simone Weil's writing on gravity and grace. For Weil, gravity describes not only a physical force, but the conditions to which existence is bound: necessity, repetition, weight, and limitation. Grace does not abolish these conditions; it emerges within them. Palazzolo-Daboul makes this relationship material. The beads take their form through weight, tension, and the pull of the earth. The pipe remains upright and resistant, yet exists to receive and carry that weight. Each finds its form through the other.
Of Ivory and Flesh does not distinguish between material and body so much as ask how the two become entangled. We encounter the world through matter while continually projecting feeling onto it. We touch objects and imagine they touch us back. We build structures and discover that they have shaped us in return.
Palazzolo-Daboul's sculptures remain suspended within this exchange: carrying and being carried, resistance and surrender, intimacy and separation. They do not attempt to overcome gravity. They make its pull visible—and reveal the tenderness that becomes possible under its weight.