Existed: Leonardo Drew.

Shields, M. Kathryn

Existed: Leonardo Drew

Weatherspoon Art Museum

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

February 6-May 9, 2010

The first glance into the gallery filled with Leonardo Drew's work reveals geometric cleanliness and pristine order. (1) Minimalist qualities permeate the space through black or white sculptures affixed to the walls, square-format works on paper, and stacked boxes in several large sculptures made of various materials. Upon closer inspection, though, the complexity of each piece is revealed. There are irregularities, odd juxtapositions, and hidden objects throughout. Broken bits of relics of our material culture, bearing personal connotations and cultural memory, infuse the artworks, both visually and metaphorically. Each piece relies on the grid as its guiding principle at the same time that it departs from the form's rigidity, to varying degrees. Additional contrasts (dark and light, present and absent, clean and dirty, etc.) enrich the work, offering viewers pleasant diversion and enticing them to come back again and again, each time to notice something new.

Very early in his career, Drew decided to number rather than name his pieces. In addition to providing a ready chronology of their production, this practice also takes away the crutch of explanatory or narrative titles. According to Xandra Eden, the Weatherspoon Art Museum's curator of exhibitions, "when he talks about the work he doesn't talk about content. He talks about his life and how he makes things. The unusual way he makes things.... He does not title the pieces but gives them numbers instead, because he does not want to tell the viewer what the work is about. The viewer is then able to supply his or her own experience. He finds it funny when curators talk about his work." (2) This openness to interpretation, perhaps in part an offshoot of non-representational art, strengthens the intrigue and multi-valence of Drew's oeuvre.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Leonardo Drew, born in Tallahassee, Florida in 1961, was named after Leonardo da Vinci. Drew explains, "My mother says it just had to be, but I try not to place much on it. I didn't know who Leonardo was until the fourth grade, when the nuns told me. I used to get beat up for my name. I didn't answer to it in first grade. I accept it now, gratefully." (3) He grew up with his mother and four brothers in the housing projects of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Art served as an escape from the drugs and crime of his hometown, leading him to first exhibit his work at age 13. After attending Parsons School of Design, he graduated with a BFA from Cooper Union in 1985. Elements of his life experience--growing up in a poor, urban environment, his heritage as an African American, his artistic training--have impacted the appearance and the meanings of his artwork, though Drew might be reticent to say so himself. He considers Jackson Pollock's all-over treatment and gestural energy an important inspiration. Other artistic forebears can be found in the post-minimal and process-oriented work of Eva Hesse, the metallic medium and enlarged scale of Richard Serra's sculpture, the monochromatic assemblages of Louise Nevelson, and the suggestive space of Louise Bourgeois's Personnages and Cells.

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Number 8, made in 1988, was a defining work in Drew's development as an artist. From a distance, the tangle of scorched black ropes cascading down the wall unifies the 8' x 10' piece. Those ropes actually barely disguise a flotsam of wood, paper, and debris that hint at some sort of disaster. Further examination reveals the inclusion of animal carcasses, animal hides, and feathers, creating a somewhat ominous memento mori. Though it no longer "reeks of decay," (4) as Lorraine Edwards observed in 1997, it still "has the look ... of death, yet seems to pulsate and breathe. Life and death walk in tandem." (5) Though most of the other works in the show are made of hand-crafted or clearly manipulated materials, Number 8 brings the actual objects into the work to speak for themselves. Another piece, Number 79 (2000), directly incorporates toys collected from garbage dumps. Though they may not be traceable to a specific era, the toys are unmistakably from the past. These lifeless and discarded objects had been forgotten, broken in many cases, before they were revived for use in Drew's sculptures.

In the early 1990s, Drew began using some distinctive materials: rust and cotton. Number 14, 1990 (not in the exhibition), a huge oxidized metal sculpture measuring approximately 8 1/2 x 7', was the first to feature rust. Rust continues to be one of the artist's preferred materials. In addition to its rich and distinctive color, it carries implications of time and neglect. Number 28 (1992) consists of stacked canvas boxes stained with rust. This piece (like Number 123, 2007, shown in the Weatherspoon's atrium), requires elaborate procedures for each new installation. At the Weatherspoon, the artist stacked the more than 200 boxes over the course of about a day.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Cotton, used to make the canvas in Number 28, is a material that is also featured prominently in the form of raw cotton, handmade cotton bales, and canvas bags in several other pieces made about the same time. When used by an African-American artist, cotton becomes a "loaded" material with references to the hard labor and "unforgiving conditions of slave labor in the service of 'King Cotton.'" (6) Claudia Schmuckli notes that the "empty canvas bags covered in rust ... evoke the sweat and blood of life led in the fields. Calling to mind deflated bodies, these empty stained sacks piled up in dense configurations eloquently speak of hardship and passing but also persistence. There is a strange beauty to these works that, while dredging up painful memories of African-American history, celebrates the endurance of a people in the face of adversity." (7) When considered in this context, the boxes of Number 28 become abstract representations of lives collected, assembled, and discarded.

The grid, so omnipresent in Drew's work, takes the form of an 11 1/2' x 24' wall of wooden boxes in Number 43 (1994). According to the artist, "The grid is my basis of sanity. Otherwise it would just be noise. I mean, these things are loud, but if you know what to listen for, they'll speak to you." (8) The sheer scale of this piece and Drew's treatment of the grid here illustrate the rhythm and cadence of much of his work. The boxes are again aligned and stacked. Some of the boxes are empty while others have openings covered by cloth or metal. Some have pieces of material stuffed into them, and many are covered with mud or rust. The overall effect, again, is quite different from the individual details. There is a texture, like a tapestry, to the overall piece and it becomes a little overwhelming to try to take in all at once. As you start to focus on the details--the openings, the cloth, the colors--the order of the grid disappears. As Eden explains, the artist, "does not want things centered or square," because that's not the way the world is. "These works have an organic quality to them.... He gives things new life." (9)

The grid becomes a glass-block cube in Number 92 (2003). The cube itself, placed on a weathered wooden glass-top table, consists of smaller stacked glass blocks. Each of the smaller blocks--marked with a hand-written number, and held together at various points with masking tape--contains a paper cast of an object. Drew cast such things as car-shaped cologne bottles, tools, and vintage faucets in white paper. When he removed the objects, the paper was often stained with rust and torn. Though he could have achieved more exact or clean results using a mold, this process is intentionally imperfect and "allows us to better understand the presence of the objects." (10)

This residue, the trace of what once existed now preserved as a memory, conveys the point of the exhibition. Drew's cast-paper pieces speak with a similar voice to the combination of collected and crafted materials seen in all of the work included here. They speak of a past, of abandoned objects, familiar shapes, previous artistic practices, and everyday forms given new life through an artist's vision.

M. Kathryn Shields

Guilford College

Endnotes

(1.) Existed: Leonardo Drew was organized in Texas by the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston and, after the Weatherspoon Art Museum, it was also scheduled to travel to the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

(2.) Xandra Eden in conversation with the author, 16 July, 2010.

(3.) Judith H. Dobrzynski, "Extracting Metaphors from 'Life's Detritus: A Sculptor Entwines Found Objects with His Experiences and Human History," New York Times (February 2, 2000), E8.

(4.) Lorraine Edwards, "Navigating a Sea of Chaos," Sculpture 16, no. 2 (February, 1997), 20.

(5.) Ibid.

(6.) Claudia Schmuckli, "Being and Somethingness," Existed: Leonardo Drew (San Antonio and London: Blaffer Gallery in Association with D Giles Limited, 2009), 11.

(7.) Schmuckli, 12.

(8.) Michael O'Sullivan, "A Trash Course in Sculpture: Leonardo Drew Elevates the Value of Junk," Washington Post (March 26, 2000), final edition.

(9.) Eden, 16 July, 2010.

(10.) Ibid.