Using a variety of materials—wood, cotton, canvas, paper, steel, aluminum, sand—Drew makes dynamic sculptures that explode and expand into their spaces. These gravity-defying sculptures convey a feeling of barely contained or restrained energy and chaos. “I think of it as making chaos legible,” he says.
City in the Grass, Drew’s first major outdoor sculpture, is both an abstracted cityscape and a colorful flying carpet. Over 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, the work is composed of aluminum panels covered in a mosaic pattern of colored sand, mimicking a Persian carpet. Drew wants his visitors to feel like Gulliver discovering Lilliput as they wander through his bird’s-eye view of a city. “In the end,” he says, “it can be your flying carpet transporting you to wherever you need to be.” Drew sees public art as a shared experience, and for him City in the Grass is not complete until the public appears and interacts with the work, making it whole.
This project at the NCMA is generously supported by the Hartfield Foundation and Libby and Lee Buck. Leonardo Drew: City in the Grass was commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York, and was first exhibited in Madison Square Park.
Leonardo Drew: Making Chaos Legible is made possible, in part, by the generous support of the Hartfield Foundation and Libby and Lee Buck, and by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources; the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.; and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions. Research for this exhibition was made possible by Ann and Jim Goodnight/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel. About Leonardo Drew
Leonardo Drew (b. 1961) lives and works in New York, NY.
Drew has had domestic and international solo exhibitions at Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, TX; Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus, OH; the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; The Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia, PA; Fine Art Society, London, UK; Galleria Napolinobilissima, Naples, Italy; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Galerie Lelong, New York, NY; Madison Art Center, Madison, WI; Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY; Ground Level Overlay, Merce Cunningham Dance Company Collaboration, New York, NY; Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Pace Prints, New York, NY; The Pace Roberts Foundation for Contemporary Art, San Antonio, TX; Palazzo Delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena, Italy; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland; Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MI; San Francisco Art Institute, Walter/Mc Bean Gallery, San Francisco, CA; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY; SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Thread Waxing Space, New York, NY; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; VIGO, London, UK; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; and the University at Buffalo Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY.
Selected public collections include Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Caldic Collectie, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge MA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio, TX; McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield Village, OH; Ruby City, San Antonio, TX; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Sorigue Foundation Collection, Lérida, Spain St Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Tate, London, UK; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Walton Arts Center, Fayetteville, AK; and Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC.