For over three decades, Leonardo Drew (b.1961, Tallahassee, Florida) has become 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 North America’s industrial past. Drew transforms accumulations of raw materials such as wood, glass, plaster, and cotton to articulate various overlapping themes: the cyclical nature of life and decay and the erosion and regeneration of nature from time. His surfaces surge with intrinsic energy, with a tension between the formal structure of the grid and the unruly energy of nature that is both creation and destruction.
Drew’s second exhibition at Galerie Lelong, Paris, will highlight a new site-responsive explosion installation and a series of “core” works that include glass and painted plaster. Each new material offers Drew a new canvas of possibility of reinvention and extension and at the same time, the re-purposing of materials gives them new energy and meaning.
