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Number 341

Leonardo Drew
Number 341, 2022
Wood, paint and sand
Variable Dimensions

"If Drew faced iconic buildings in Manhattan, here the neighbours will include Rachel Whiteread’s sublime “Untitled (Stairs)” from 2001 and Isa Genzken’s creepy arrangement of dolls under sun umbrellas from 2007. But there’s little fear that Drew’s assemblage — of hundreds of shards of painted plywood that sputter off the wall and seem to shatter and spin across the floor — will be overlooked. His work has a pent-up power and magnetism, an atomised complexity that draws viewers to it. Traces of more recent journeys will be seen in his installation at Basel. For the four years leading up to the pandemic, Drew had been visiting Jingdezhen, a centre of porcelain production in the north-east of China. “That was when colour started affecting my work,” he says. In 2019, for a show at Lelong gallery in New York, he created an exuberant installation (“Number 215”) of hundreds of wooden parts painted with patterns then broken, distressed and frozen in mid-flight frenzy. Passers-by were drawn into the gallery from the street to leap around in its energetic force field. One day, CBS anchor Anthony Mason walked past, and shortly afterwards Drew was in front of the cameras, explaining his art to the nation. “We all carry a collective weight,” said Drew then. In Basel, he’s the one throwing it up in the air again, seeing where it all lands". -Caroline Roux, The Financial Times, 10 June 2022