Leonardo Drew
Goodman Gallery Johannesburg
27 May - 1 July 2023
Head-Image
We are talking abstraction - its beginnings are in the Continent, the Motherland. Having this come back around, introducing what I do as an abstractionist and going back to Africa and [abstraction’s] roots, it’s perfect
Leonardo Drew
Goodman Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition on the African continent for American Abstractionist Leonardo Drew, presenting a major site-specific work as well as a new series of wall-based sculptures. The exhibition is organised in close collaboration with Galerie Lelong & Co.
Leonardo Drew
Number 350, 2022
Wood, paint, and calcium carbonate
182.9 x 61 x 15.2 cm / 72 x 24 x 6 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 356D, 2022
Plaster and paint on paper
91.4 x 91.4 cm / 36 x 36 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 357D, 2022
Wood, paint, and calcium carbonate on paper
91.4 x 91.4 cm / 36 x 36 in.
Unique
Over the past three decades, Drew has honed a distinctive abstract language articulated through weathering raw materials (wood, scrap metal, cotton) to produce richly textured works that play on a tension between order and chaos. His surfaces approach a language of their own, embodying the laboured process of writing oneself into history. Drew’s practice builds on the lineage of abstraction, which was established and reworked by artists Melvin Edwards, Sam Gilliam, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock and William T. Williams.
Leonardo Drew
Number 355D, 2022
Plaster, wood, calcium carbonate, and paint on paper
91.4 x 91.4 cm / 36 x 36 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 370, 2023
Wood, plaster and paint
Approximation: 78.7 x 78.7 x 40.6 cm / 31 x 31 x 16 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 369, 2023
Wood, plaster, and paint
Approximation: 78.7 x 78.7 x 40.6 cm / 31 x 31 x 16 in.
Unique
Drew’s studio-based practice - which he describes as “becoming the weather” - acts out the passing of time, visually echoing natural forces through scrapping, digging, burning, and rusting to create gravity-defying, wall-based cosmologies:
“There is definitely an alchemy that is involved at all levels. Because when I am rusting and burning things, I am using the weather and I am learning how to become the weather. There is never a time when there is not a natural force that I am either using or echoing” For Drew, the viewer completes his work and brings it to life. This informs the decision to number his works and avoid titles which inevitably confer meaning:
“I am always in one way or another learning from the viewer. They are complicit in finishing the work. If I gave my works titles, then you would be clued in on what I am thinking about. A number is like cataloguing and that’s it”
Leonardo Drew
Number 368, 2023
Wood and Paint
Approximation: 182.9 x 30.5 x 61 cm / 72 x 12 x 24 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 367, 2023
Wood, paint, and calcium carbonate
243.8 x 25.4 x 14 cm / 96 x 10 5.5 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 353, 2022
Wood and paint
90.2 x 90.2 x 8.9 cm / 35.5 x 35.5 x 3.5 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 366, 2023
Wood, plaster, cotton and paint
76.2 x 101.6 cm / 30 x 40 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 365, 2023
Wood, sand, plaster and paint
76.2 x 101.6 cm / 30 x 40 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 364, 2023
Wood, cotton, plaster and paint
76.2 x 101.6 cm / 30 x 40 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew
Number 376, 2023
Wood and paint
78.7 x 78.7 x 40.6 cm / 31 x 31 x 16 in.
Unique
Leonardo Drew (b. 1961, Tallahassee, Florida) is a New York-based artist who, over three decades, has become known for creating contemplative abstract sculptural works. Drew currently has solo exhibitions in the UK and the US with new site-specific installations at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Solo museum exhibitions include the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University (2022); Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson (2020); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2020); de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, California (2017); Palazzo Delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena, Italy (2006); and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2000).
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. In 2019, Drew was commissioned for a new outdoor project for Madison Square Park, marking the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s 38th public commission and the artist’s first major public art project. The installation, titled City in the Grass, has since travelled to the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Mississippi Museum of Art and The Wadsworth Atheneum.
Drew’s works are included in public collections around the world, including 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.
Leonardo Drew is represented by Galerie Lelong & Co., Anthony Meier Gallery and Goodman Gallery.
