Leonardo Drew creates monumental abstract installations that force the viewer to question concepts of space and specialities altogether. His mystifying works put the viewer’s imagination on alert, when confronted with a seemingly displaced arrangement. The artist’s works are often mistaken as found objects assembled into sculpture. However, Drew creates his surreal sculptural installations from all new materials, such as wood, iron, cotton, paper, and mud, that he then subjects to a strong deterioration process that consists of burning, oxidizing, and decaying, among other things. The artist proclaims, “I don’t work with found objects because there is already a history embedded in the material. For me, I need to go through the rigor, touch it, get involved with it, transform the material…You become the weather.” Drew’s work challenges the space in which they are placed by creating a tension that forces us to reconsider the spaces they occupy. 

Here, an uncommonly small work, Untitled, was made specifically to donate to the Blaffer Museum at the University of Houston for their annual auction, following Drew’s successful solo exhibit there. Dr. Shirley Rose (our benefactor) won the auction and took home this prize from the artist. Four planks of wood are held together by a partially hidden steel bar. Overlaid is another thinner plank of wood and two painted circles of wood resembling two anthropomorphized eyes. Several strongly placed screws hold the small sculpture together. The varying tones of browns, ochres, and blacks reflect differing states of the material’s decay and manipulation. As is his practice, the artist has transformed the materials to present as something they are not. This visual trick allows the viewer to reconsider what they see. As a single solitary piece—unlike the artist’s usual large-scale works—this small sculpture is a unique addition to the collection.   

Leonardo Drew was born in Tallahassee, Florida in 1961, and grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Drew attended Parsons School of Design, and received a BFA from Cooper Union (1985). Among the honors and grants he has received are the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2011); Asian Cultural Council Grant (1997); Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (1994); and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Grant (1993). Drew has been awarded residencies at Artpace (1995); the Studio Museum in Harlem (1991); Vermont Studio School (1990); and Skowhegan (1998). Major exhibitions of his work have appeared at SCAD Museum of Art (2013); DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (2011); Artpace (2010); Weatherspoon Art Museum (2010); Blaffer Gallery (2009); Sikkema Jenkins (2007); Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena (2006); the Fabric Workshop (2002); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2000); Bronx Museum of the Arts (2000); Saint Louis Art Museum (1996); Carnegie International (1995); MCA San Diego (1995); and Biennial Dakar (1992). Leonardo Drew lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.