VIGO is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition of wall-based sculptures by Brooklyn based artist Leonardo Drew.
Drew is known for reflective abstract sculptural installations most often based on exploration of a grid or framework, which incorporate created, manipulated and found materials constructed from fabricated wood, tree branches, roots, paper, raw cotton, rust, found objects and mud. He re-examines and re-invents these objects and materials, which are often loaded with multiple African American historical, cultural and social connotations. The resulting reflective work engages with the cyclical and transient nature of life and the passing of time.
The constructions in the current exhibition have an intensity often found in his large-scale museum works. They repeat and pulsate, integrating the man-made and natural worlds as they occur in the context of the city. Some are composed of wooden urban debris collected for him for $50 per bag by people who live on the street and material is rescued from condemned housing or architectural salvage. In this way he finds a mixture of texture and material that is hard to re-create. It is neither totally man made nor natural. It may have been once but its existence over time has changed it. These sculptural elements are mixed with painted, machine-cut wood and natural tree roots, which suggest man and nature in both harmony and opposition, battling against and coming together in repetitive but variant structures.
Growing up in the Bridport projects he showed a talent for draftsmanshio which was recognized by teachers running an art center in its midst. He went on to attend the Parsons School of Design, and his BFA from the Cooper Union. His public solo exhibitions at notable institutions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1995); The Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC (2000); the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin (2001); and Palazzo Delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea in Siena (2006). His mid-career survey exhibition, Existed: Leonardo Drew, debuted in 2009 at the Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston travelling to the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC and the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA. He has participated in artist residencies at ArtPace, San Antonio and The Studio Museum of Harlem in New York, among others. In 2011 he won the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize. The annual prize, which includes $50,000, is given to one African American artist whose body of work exhibits great innovation, promise and creativity. Previous recipients include Leslie Hewitt (2010), Glenn Ligon (2009), Nadine Robinson (2008), Trenton Doyle Hancock (2007) and Lorna Simpson (2006). In the last year he has been accepted into the TATE collection, has shown groundbreaking prints with Pace Gallery and presented a major exhibition with Sikkema Jenkins Gallery in New York.
Drew’s work is to be found in major museum collections around the world including the TATE, MOMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim and the St Louis Art Museum. Private collections include the Rubell, Hort and Frankel Collections as well as the Linda Pace Foundation and the David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF).
Drew will also be the subject of an upcoming episode of the contemporary art documentary series Art 21, scheduled to broadcast in the fall of 2014.
