Leonardo Drew is an artist known for his large wall-mounted sculptures composed of jagged tree trunks layered with thousands of segments of cut wood. The monumental installations perform as abstracted landscapes, which undulate and retract through a combination of natural and man-made shapes.
Although typically monochromatic, the works vary in color depending on how extensively Drew chooses to alter the material’s exterior. In some works the wood is stark black, while in others the light wood appears relatively untreated.
“By manipulating the wood and other objects to weather and age them, Drew’s awe-inspiring sculptures reveal the artist’s intense attention to shaping, cutting, building, and working his pieces through his own material language,” explains a press release for Drew’s eponymous solo exhibition at Talley Dunn Gallery this past fall. “These densely stacked and layered sculptures activate the spaces in which they occupy with a dynamic presence whereby complexity and simplicity coexist.”
Drew’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions, including The Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, Ireland, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Miami Art Museum, and the St. Louis Art Museum. He has also collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and has participated in artist residencies at ArtPace, San Antonio and The Studio Museum of Harlem in New York City.
Recently Drew produced an installation for San Francisco’s de Young Museum titled Number 197, a work which responded to the institution’s unique architecture by spanning three walls of its atrium. This fall he also exhibited at Talley Dunn Gallery in Dallas, Texas where his solo exhibition Leonardo Drew was on view through December 16.
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