If you want to get to know the recent output of prominent artist Leonardo Drew, then the chance to see an in-depth selection of his work at the relatively intimate Talley Dunn Gallery in Knox/Henderson is an unusual treat. Typically, to view such pieces, you must brave the crowds of an art fair or museum, or hop on a plane to New York City.
Like his Renaissance namesake, Drew has a relentless curiosity, and never stops exploring — from his childhood in inner-city Bridgeport, Conn., to the heights of his success. He painstakingly combines thousands of seemingly cast-off (but actually carefully made) pieces of weathered wood and painted plaster to create additive wall reliefs, of different sizes and shapes, that evoke natural cycles of growth and decay.
By building up bits and pieces into large-scale compositions (an approach also taken by artists Mark Bradford and El Anatsui), Drew achieves a richness of composition that repays study from a range of distances. If you look at a piece from 6 inches away, you will see details that are implied, but not quite revealed, when the piece is viewed from 6 feet away.
In many of the works on display, the intricately detailed wood reliefs are painted all in black (a technique also used by Louise Nevelson). By eliminating any variations in color and tone, Drew brings a viewer’s attention especially toward the nuances of line and contour.
The star of the show is Number 192T (2017), a 10-by-11-foot behemoth topped with a phalanx of blackened tree trunks that surge forth overhead like terrifying Valkyries. Approaching this piece from the opposite side of the gallery, you can almost imagine hearing a soundtrack from Wagner (or perhaps Metallica) threatening to pound any challengers into submission. And when standing under the shadow of the overhanging trees, to study the lower parts of the composition, you feel intimidatingly enveloped by the piece’s great size.
Also fascinating is Number 183T (2016), which renders a semi-abstract landscape view in starkly, dramatically contrasting black and white. Here, the absence of color produces a ghostly effect.
But the most absorbing composition is Number 196T (2019). The ground level of this piece is formed by a tight grid of rectilinearly packed, multicolored painted plaster chips. From a distance, it resembles a model of Kowloon Walled City, a hyper-dense skyscraper district in Hong Kong that was demolished in 1994. But on closer inspection, it’s easier to see that a whole slew of the colored chips are tumbling across the piece’s surface, as if a hurricane had blown them out of place, and then suddenly stopped. The sense of arrested motion is uncanny.
By contrast, the smaller works on the side walls — including numbers 185T, 186T and 187T — come across as milder, even subdued. They suggest the basics of Drew’s approach, but if you saw them in isolation, you probably wouldn’t suspect the dramatic scope of the larger pieces.
Drew’s show magnificently conveys the sheer pleasure of creation; at the same time, its subtlety provides many layers of long-term reward.
Details
“Leonardo Drew” runs through Dec. 15 at Talley Dunn Gallery. By appointment only. 5020 Tracy St., Dallas. 214-521-9898, talleydunn.com.
