Walls Sky Floor- Leonardo Drew

Leonardo Drew

“Leonardo Drew is known for his dynamic large-scale sculptural installations. On the one hand, Drew’s sculptures can be seen as exercises in formalism rooted in the very experience of looking. On the other hand, these works explore memory by employing a wide range of material to evoke common elements of the human experience and of our diverse histories.” – Sikkema Jenkins Gallery

In his studio, 2008.

No. 8 1988

 

Detail, No.8, 1988

 

No. 43 1995

Each sculpture starts on the floor with a grid of some sort, white squares, for instance. He works on one section at a time, and as he does he keeps a television set (also drenched in rust-hued dust) going in the background. "I always have something on," he said. "It charges me. It gives me the sense that I'm connected to the world."

Close Up, No. 64, 1998.

“The immense, wall-sized 64  is composed of hundreds of small square boxes, each of which is stuffed or covered with bits of fabric, batting, threads, and scraps of lace and what might once have been quilts or rugs. As the full-scale photograph represents, from across the room, it appears like a huge, compartmentalized drawer for classification of small things. It's in your grandfather's workshop; in the dusty shop of an ancient someone selling sewing notions, trims and buttons. Unlike the dynamic works we've seen above, this piece actively casts off a sense of age. It's flatness is part of it and the fact that the material that protrudes from its surface is without suspense. It's filthy; it droops and hangs.”  

“The artist often ages his found and fabricated materials, employing a process that is physically and conceptually steeped in memory, history, and the passage of time. These disparate materials are often composed within a grid that organizes the chaos into an ordered structure. Deeply informed by the theory and practice of mid-twentieth-century abstraction, post-minimal and process art, Drew's emotionally-charged abstract compositions are evocative and carry both a metaphorical and historical weight. To encourage personal interpretation, Drew titles his works sequentially and explains that "the works in themselves should act as mirrors."

Number 26, 1992.

“Following the work as it weaves through space, the viewer must duck under an overhang to access its backmost iteration. Experienced from the inside, the structure becomes both a shelter and an obstruction: the relic of some portentous event past.” – Courtney Fiske, Artforum

No. 161 2012