Goodman Gallery presents recent and site-specific work by Leonardo Drew, an exhibition organised in close collaboration with Galerie Lelong & Co, marking Drew’s first solo show in the UK since 2015.
For this exhibition, the New-York based artist transforms the lower-ground of the gallery with a monumental site-specific installation.
he artist typically uses manipulated organic materials to create richly detailed works – seemingly bursting from the walls – which resemble densely populated cities or urban wastelands and evoke the mutability of the natural world. Materials include wood, cardboard, paint, paper, plastic, rope, string and tree trunks. The artist subjects these elements to processes of oxidation, burning and weathering. These labour-intense manipulations mimic natural processes and transform these objects into sculptures that address formal and social concerns as well as the cyclical nature of existence. Drew’s long-standing interest in lifecycles and how human labour leaves traces of life behind is an important aspect of the materiality of the work.
Exemplary works of Drew’s approach can be found in Number 314 and Number 325. These elongated silhouettes have the monumentality of a skyscraper, as well as the semblance of an ancient tablet. Made in Drew’s signature technique, featuring neatly stacked pieces of cut lumber in a dynamic, gridded sculptural relief, they are finished with a matte black wash with a white spinal column in the centre of each panel, which emphasizes vertical rhythm. The white element amidst the black is like a code or a written language – like Braille, a micro-text to decipher. But it is also like a macro view of a densely built city. Drew says: “I think of it as making chaos legible.”
Artworks
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Artist Bio
Leonardo Drew (b. 1961, Tallahassee, Florida, USA) is known for his significant installations and sculptures which explore the tension between order and chaos. Drew transforms accumulations of raw materials such as wood, scrap metal and cotton to create works that play upon a tension between order and chaos. His surfaces often approach a language of their own, embodying the laboured process of writing oneself into history.
Drew’s work has been seen in major museums worldwide. He was commissioned for a new outdoor project City in the Grass for Madison Square Park in 2019, marking the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s 38th public commission and the artist’s first major public outdoor art project. City in the Grass was presented as a solo exhibition in three museums, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut (2021); Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson (2020); and North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2020). In 2022, Drew was elected as a National Academician by the National Academy of Design. Another major new commission featured at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK in 2023. Drew’s mid-career survey, Existed, premiered at the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston in 2009 and travelled to the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Collections include: Tate, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD.
Drew currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
