Zachary Leener’s (b. 1981, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, California) ceramics are both illustrative and open to interpretation, suspended somewhat ambiguously between iconographic and unexplainable. They’re objects that at once appear totally familiar—evoking a range of horizontal forms such as bassinets, strollers, hospital beds and coffins—yet resist fully resolving into explicable things. Gritty and textured, covered in pastel shards and smooth glazes, the surfaces of Leener’s works are built up and often significantly transformed over the course of repeated firings.
He earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the University of California, Riverside. Leener also attended the Center for Art and Culture, Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, France.
Leener has been exhibiting at the Gallery since 2023. He has had solo and duo exhibitions at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York (2020); Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2019); and Tif Sigfrids, Los Angeles (2016). He has also been in group exhibitions at Megan Mulrooney, Los Angeles (2025); ReadingRoom, Melbourne, Australia (2023); Parker Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Ceysson & Bénétière, New York (2019); and Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (2018). Leener’s works are in public collections at the Aishti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon and the Jan Shrem & Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, California.