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.

Opens September 19 at 6 PM


Checklist Press Release

Luna Palazzolo-Daboul (b. 1991, Mar del Plata, Argentina) is a Miami-based, self-taught artist whose practice emerged through years of assisting her contemporaries and working in conservation.

Drawing from the minimalist movements of the 1960s and 70s, South American folk culture, Beat Generation poetry, and a broad range of philosophical writing and literature, Palazzolo-Daboul’s work engages morality, identity, and the human condition with an iconoclastic edge — quietly resistant, shot through with irony, and alive with complexity.

Her practice often takes form through sculpture and installation, employing industrial materials such as rebar, concrete, and glass — substances that bear weight and endure — as vehicles for exploring how belief, memory, and identity solidify in the physical world.

Repetition is central to her work, wielded as a form of inquiry. Through recurring gestures and structures, she probes inherited and institutional systems that shape belief, belonging, and conditioning, holding those tensions open without resolution.

Solo exhibitions include Fantasy Life (Rice Hotel, Miami, 2025), Scattered Pieces (Miami Design District, 2025), curated by Karen Grimson, Closer (Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, 2023), and UBI SUNT (Edge Zones, Miami, 2021). Selected group exhibitions include Hikarie Hall (Tokyo), Zilberman Gallery (Miami), Piero Atchugarry Gallery (2024), Primary (Miami), Voloshyn Gallery (2025), Green Space Miami (2025), KDR Miami (2025), and Queue Gallery (CDMX, 2026).

She is the recipient of a Wavemaker Grant funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation, as well as awards from the Broward Cultural Division, the Miami Individual Artist Grant, and the Oolite Live-In Residency. In 2025, Palazzolo-Daboul was a Season 7 Commissioner (CMXNR) Artist. Her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)

In parallel with her studio practice, she is the founder of Tunnel Projects, an artist-run space located in an underground plaza in Miami, supporting studios, exhibitions, and community-driven programming.


Primary (Est. 2007) is a context and research-driven curatorial collective with an emphasis on public art. We thrive amongst the self-taught, working-class misfits, who explore the margins of a new Americana through pungent, human-focused narratives. Our program engages with the raw and uncanny, celebrating border voices, bootleg culture, and intergenerational commentary, connecting the new and unseen with broader audiences and evolving collections.

For further information, please contact info@thisisprimary.com