NEW YORK, NY.- parrasch heijnen will participate in The Armory Show 2026 with a solo presentation of new works by Los Angeles-based artist Kristy Luck (b. 1985, Woodstock, IL). Luck’s atmospheric palettes and blurred horizons are composed of organic forms that emerge and recede, producing oscillations between figure and ground.
This presentation emerges from the artist’s approach to painting as both affective and conceptual, their subject matter a dialogue on place, specifically between Illinois, where Luck grew up, and Los Angeles where they now live and work. The artist considers the concept of home as accumulation and reconciliation, the embodied residue of a site quietly present in one’s identity. Within visual reverberations of a once inhabited or imagined place, Luck constructs a visual language of signifiers. Their mother’s bracelet, for example, a unique personal memento, is a recurring subject as Luck transforms uncertainty into a mode of intention; memory a ruminating, mystifying act.
Luck’s ongoing exploration of the instability of language versus experience and image stems from the ambiguity of their family history. Luck’s maternal lineage, affected by the Sixties Scoop in the U.S of the 1960s, gives a context to their practice, paradoxically grounded in displacement and the impossibility of articulating origins as definitive. Although they know their maternal lineage is from the Navajo Nation, broken connections and missing records have left an indelibly incomplete picture. In Luck’s process, painting becomes a way to give form to what cannot be fully recovered or known, a symbolic evocation of the ways trauma and cultural loss move across generations. For Luck, the fissures of understanding are not meant to be fixed, but rather expanded, increasing their volume and their intensifying color, serving as a poetic bridge connecting place and self.
Kristy Luck received their BFA from Rockford University (Rockford, IL) in 2010 and their MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL) in 2014. Luck’s solo exhibitions include parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles; Franklin Parrasch Gallery (New York, NY), Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); and Mendes Wood DM (So Paulo, Brazil). Group shows include: Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (San Rafael, CA); Robilant+Voena (New York, NY and Milan, Italy); Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York, NY); GRIMM (New York, NY); and Projet Pange (Montreal, Canada). Luck’s work was recently featured in the Hammer biennial “Made in L.A. 2025” (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA).
