Cody Ledvina, “Jack Kevorkian,” 2024, yarn on canvas, 18.5 x 24.5 inches. Photo: Emily Peacock
In 2016, Cody Ledvina noticed something strange. A painting at the Wallace Collection in London called Fruit and Flowers by the Dutch artist Jan van Huysum — the kind of painting Ledvina would have typically ignored — stopped him in his tracks. For almost an hour Ledvina fixated on a single grape no larger than a dime upon which van Huysum had painted a detailed reflection of his studio window and the cloud formations visible through it that day circa 1720*. For Ledvina, this encounter sparked the realization that anything could be interesting, even if at first it appeared entirely unremarkable. Ledvina then went on to create at least two artworks directly inspired by van Huysum’s grapes, which are part of a suite of recent paintings on view at Pablo Cardoza Gallery in Houston.
Cody Ledvina, “Ken Paxton Impeachment Trial in the Reflection of Grapes (Jan van Huysum),” 2024, 18 x 24 inches. Photo: Emily Peacock
The majority of works at Cardoza Gallery are, however, hardly paintings in any conventional sense of the word. Instead, Ledvina’s paintings — some of which utilize artificial intelligence — are made from yarn, stickers, rice, metal clips, and fake plants, among other difficult-to-conserve materials, and call into question the limits, supports, and processes traditionally associated with the medium. Van Huysum’s grapes seem to have become for Ledvina a portal quite literally to and through the inner depths of painting itself. Consider Ken Paxton Impeachment Trial in the Reflection of Grapes (Jan van Huysum) (2024), Ledvina’s homage to the Dutch artist but one significantly updated with a reflection from his own “studio window” — his television — as its beaming impressions of witness after witness appear, grotesquely miniaturized and waxy, upon each hand-drawn grape. History is always with us, but as we recall it we change it, Ledvina’s grapes seem to intimate.
Cody Ledvina, “Dogs Inside an Oscar Award,” 2022, 35 x 87.5 inches. Photo: Emily Peacock
Pareidolia — the tendency to see specific or meaningful shapes in otherwise random or ambiguous stimuli — is, unsurprisingly, another interest Ledvina explores in his recent paintings, and quite humorously too, in the case of Dogs Inside an Oscar Award (2022) and Jack Kevorkian (2024). In each artwork, Ledvina teases out faces hidden in plain sight by either massaging a mass of yarn into the likes of Kevorkian’s face or inking, by my count, twenty dogs’ heads and bodies into the folds of a human-sized cardboard Oscar trophy he found on the side of the road. These paintings make good on the maxim that anything, no matter how banal or tasteless, can be interesting, if only one knows how to look.
Cody Ledvina, “Green-Face Jesus,” 2023, watercolor on paper with clipboards and wood, 48 x 73 inches. Photo: Emily Peacock
In other words, for Ledvina it would seem that looking and resurrection are intimately related, evident not only in how the artist reanimates discarded objects or derives fresh inspiration from the details of art historical clichés but in how a number of his artworks seem to be on the precipice of change and transformation. Of course, the subject of resurrection is at play quite literally in Green-Face Jesus (2023) when Ledvina paints Christ springing into action with a rotten-looking face, as if having, only moments prior, risen from the dead. But there is also an unfinished and unstable quality to this painting that suggests further developments to come. Close inspection reveals that Christ’s left hand is bleeding; immediately adjacent, however, is a handwritten statement in pencil that says, “a friend just told me its meant to be on the wrist [sic],” with an arrow redirecting attention from Christ’s bloody palm to the intended location of the nail’s deathly insertion. While one could interpret this as evidence of a mistake, I interpret it as Ledvina unapologetically incorporating new information and letting the painting develop in whichever direction it needs to take. This also leads me to believe that Ledvina’s paintings are not so much assertions of finitude than they are hypotheses, provocations, or assumptions that lay the groundwork for further artistic investigations.
Made clear by the exhibition is Ledvina’s tendency toward inductive reasoning and his exploratory approach to art making, both traits associated with the late German artist Sigmar Polke. Polke’s “Goya” series (1982-1984), a multi-year investigation of the “underneaths” of Francisco Goya’s painting Time (1812), began with Polke noticing a strange detail on the surface of the Spanish artist’s painting, an experience not unlike Ledvina’s encounter with van Huysum’s Fruit and Flowers. Polke then worked with X-ray technology and created a series of photographs, photocopies, and surmised drawings that envisioned Goya’s underpainting. Following the “Goya” series, Polke developed “alchemical” paintings involving fugitive materials like arsenic, silver oxide, and hygroscopic pigments, united not by medium or style but by an approach devoted to close looking and a belief in the transmutability of art. Similarly, Ledvina extends painting beyond itself when he attempts to visualize in three dimensions the core of a rotten apple or collaborates with artificial intelligence to render a family of basketball players or himself as a dinosaur — all artworks which speak to the experimental nature of artmaking.
Cody Ledvina, “Self Portrait as an AI Dinosaur Generated by Bill Willis,” 2024, watercolor, 28.25 x 40.25 inches. Photo: Emily Peacock
Another artist (also German) who comes to mind is Martin Kippenberger, whose legendary theatrics and sardonic wit put scare quotes around the artist. Less about ego-stroking than making fun of the culture industry, the object of Kippenberger’s irony could be anything from tourism to the perception of the artist as messiah or mystic. I thought of Kippenberger when, at the opening reception of Ledvina’s exhibition, the artist was called upon to give an artist talk. Before Ledvina began, he proclaimed that any artist should be able to do this in less than five minutes; he then launched into a hectic attempt to discuss all seventeen paintings within the prescribed time frame. New attendees eventually appeared in the gallery and Ledvina was pressed to repeat the talk, which ultimately occurred three times throughout the night. But as the night wore on and alcoholic drinks continued to be poured, Ledvina’s talks became faster and more garbled, and they quickly deteriorated into free-wheeling farce, resulting in smiles and laughter. I would like to think the crowd was not so much laughing at Ledvina but at the absurdity of the expectations and rituals associated with performing “the artist.” Ledvina, like many great artists, seems to be keenly aware of these straight-jackets but has a way of reveling in the joke of it all without succumbing to nihilism.
Cody Ledvina, “Caf Kid,” 2016, 15 x 18 inches. Photo: Emily Peacock
For anyone feeling trapped or frustrated by the systems and conventions at work within their own lives, I suggest seeing “Crawfish Ledvina: Recent Paintings,” if only for a mental stretch break. Ledvina’s painterly investigations offer serious reflections on what it means to see without the guardrails of preconception, but he delivers them to us with a sense of humor and curiosity that suggests there is still wonder, pleasure, and joy left to be found in this world if only one knows how to look.
*Author in conversation with the artist, September 28, 2024.
“Crawfish Ledvina: Recent Paintings,” is on view at Pablo Cardoza Gallery through November 24.
