You are now watching: Existed: Leonardo Drew

Here’s something I’ve been looking forward to for months. Thanks in large part to our neighbor Heather and the kind staff of the Weatherspoon Art Museum we gained access to the inner workings of the art installation process and were able to interview Leo in our kitchen.

This was a collaborative effort as part of our new collective, MWP,  shot together with Mark Wagoner Productions.

I’m sure it wasn’t easy having 3 camera operators in the museum with the constant clicking of shutters bouncing off the clean white walls and a dolly moving all about the place.  So,  I want to thank Xandra (curator of exhibits) for her patience along with the rest of the staff who do some pretty amazing work.

The exhibit is a survey of Leo’s work over the past 20 years with pieces on loan from all over the country.

This is something you shouldn’t miss.

Praise for Leonardo Drew:

In the second gallery, Leonardo Drew is showing new rust-covered reliefs and sculptures that, despite their look of neglect and decay, are overworked. Time hangs heavily, and theatrically, on these pieces. One, a series of distressed glass and wood boxes, each containing a little bit of detritus, suggests reliquaries.

The largest piece, more characteristic of Mr. Drew’s work, is a wall-size relief whose small compartments are packed with paper, small objects or closed off with little squares of fabric or colored-paper collages. Toward the work’s center, one box contains a carved, gargoyle-like face.

These works are so seductive as to be manipulative, part of the manipulation being that it is hard to tell if Mr. Drew’s rich patinas are the result of artistic intention or time’s inexorable march. In the end, one leans toward artistic intention, which then implies a toxic level of artifice. It’s like looking at a stage set whose effects are meant to be read from a distance and thus seem overwrought when viewed more closely.

Roberta Smith, The New York Times