Artworks

Leonardo Drew
Number 263, 2020
Wood and paint
31 x 31 x 16 inches (78.7 x 78.7 x 40.6 cm)
(GL14814)

In Leonardo Drew's signature language, a richly textured surface with contrasting elements of raw and pigmented wood is built up in Number 263. The undulating shield or mask-like form is recent for Drew; it is abstract yet akin to non-Western art. The work also reveals the artist’s current play of color in his practice.

Drew is known for creating contemplative abstract sculptural works that play upon a tension between order and chaos. At once monumental and intimate in scale, his work recalls post-Minimalist sculpture that alludes to America’s industrial past. Drew transforms accumulations of raw materials such as wood, scrap metal, and cotton to articulate various overlapping themes with emotional gravitas: from the cyclical nature of life and decay to the erosion of time. His surfaces often approach a language of their own, embodying the labored process of writing oneself into history.

Recent solo museum presentations of his work have been held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; and North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. Current solo exhibitions are on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut and the traveling solo exhibition Leonardo Drew: Cycles, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer Foundation, at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University. In addition, Drew’s works have been shown internationally and are included in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; and Tate, London.

Drew was born in 1961 in Tallahassee, Florida, and he grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.