Leonardo Drew Number 130 2009

Richly layered with art historical and sociopolitical references, this monumental work by Leonardo Drew engages the grid structures of Minimalism, while also addressing the textures of gestural painting and the issue of urban decay. This work is constructed from thousands of pieces of wood that look like found debris but are actually produced by hand in the artist’s studio. Stacked together onto individual square surfaces that are combined to create a gigantic grid, Number 130 creates a play between order and chaos.  The organization of the materials suggests an aerial view of a gigantic city. With its broken fragments and large area of blackened wood, Drew’s piece evokes a burned and deteriorated urban landscape.
Identification
Title
Number 130
Production Date
2009
Object Number
2010.8
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by PAMM’s Collectors Council
Copyright
© Leonardo Drew. Courtesy of Galerie Lelong & Co., New York
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Wood and mixed media
Dimensions
134 x 132 x 20 3/4 inches
Visual Description
Number 130 by Leonardo Drew is a large-scale, mixed media sculpture. It is made mostly out of wood and an assortment of found materials. It measures roughly eleven feet tall by eleven feet wide and it extends outward twenty and three quarters of an inch. The piece is made up of twenty-five individual wood panels, each measuring roughly two feet by two feet. The individual panels are arranged into a tight square grid of five columns and five rows, neatly mounted to the wall to create the entire composition. The panels contain smaller pieces of wood blocks, branches, and scraps. Many of these smaller components extend outward towards the viewer.  Starting from the top left the piece is dense with smaller light and dark brown wooden blocks. The blocks vary in size and shape and appear to simulate the view of a city seen from above. Several pieces of wood extend beyond the grid at the top, bottom, and left sides of the sculpture. The densely packed wooden blocks stretch the entirety of the left-hand side of the composition. Towards the top and bottom middle of the piece, the blocks are less densely packed together. The right-hand extreme of the composition becomes much sparser and one can see the wood panel that serves as the foundation of the piece. In the center of the composition there is a section of densely packed wooden blocks that are painted black. This section of black blocks reaches the top right-hand side of the composition at a diagonal angle. 
Leonardo Drew
Leonardo Drew — b. 1961, Tallahassee; lives in New York
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