Known for his explosive sculptural works, Leonardo Drew creates reflective abstract pieces that play on the tension between order and chaos. Transforming and eroding materials by hand in the studio, he explores the cyclical nature of life and decay.

ABOUT EKOW ESHUN

Ekow Eshun is a writer and curator. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth, overseeing Britain’s foremost public art programme and the former Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Described by Vogue as ‘the most inspired – and inspiring – curator in Britain’, he has staged acclaimed exhibitions internationally and was awarded the Association for Art History’s Curatorial Prize 2023. He is a contributor to publications including Vogue, the New York Times, Financial Times and the Guardian and is the author of books including, most recently, The Strangers: Five Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them, longlisted for the Gordon Burn prize and the Jhalak prize. He was a judge for the Turner Prize 2024 and a member of the jury for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024.

ABOUT LEONARDO DREW

Leonardo Drew’s works have been shown nationally and internationally, and are included in numerous public and private collections. Public institutions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; and Tate, London, among others. Drew also collaborated with Merce Cunningham on the production of “Ground Level Overlay”. New York Times art critic Roberta Smith describes his large reliefs as “pocked, splintered, seemingly burned here, bristling there, unexpectedly delicate elsewhere. An endless catastrophe seen from above. The energies intimated in these works are beyond human control, bigger than all of us”. Drew currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and San Antonio, Texas.