Grant Mooney’s calcis, his solo exhibition in the North Gallery of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, continues the artist’s practice of sculpture that attends to its materials and proximal surroundings.

Working with the received conditions of the space, Mooney’s work departs from the materiality of the gallery’s walls which, like the entire Center for the Arts complex, are composed of large limestone bricks. Limestone is a type of rock formed of crystalline calcium carbonate from deposits of seashells, and calcium carbonate is the predominant chemical compound found in cuttlebone, the cartilaginous internal shell of the cuttlefish. Cuttlebone is used for carving and casting metals within jewelry-making practices. Originally trained in jewelry design, Mooney has used cuttlebone in a number of sculptures, foregrounding the processual material in his solo exhibitions radial at Progetto (2023) in Lecce, Italy, where limestone is a predominant architectural material; and extence at Miguel Abreu Gallery (2022) in New York, where limestone can be found in the gallery’s floor tiles.

Mooney’s practice positions art objects as “severely entangled entities” through a careful attunement to the social extensions of material and its technological production. These attunements and their relationality are expressed through their interaction with another active material in Mooney’s practice, light. In his words, light itself has “a material consequence,” transitioning substances in and out of visual presence. In calcis, Mooney’s sculptures are placed directly on the floor in front of interior throughway’s large windows, and in the gallery, which is partially-illuminated by an ocular skylight, activating the vertical axis in the space.

Text: Ezra & Cecile Zilkha Gallery