Untitled

Leonardo Drew is known for his monumental wall reliefs that make use of found objects and urban detritus, as well as for freestanding architectonic sculptures. His works are often seen as Minimalist-for their use of geometric forms, repeating patterns, and orthogonal lines-although the use of complex textures is integral to them.

Drew spoke of the use of cotton, which covers half of Untitled, saying that "cotton has a memory. It has a history." Symbolically it relates to the back-breaking labor of slaves on Southern plantations, and here finds a special resonance in its pairing with splintering wooden boxes that contain materials of everyday life, including a metal toaster and toys, some stained with rust. He has stated that "the weight of my ancestry still continues in my work" and attributes his use of small boxes to a visit he made in 1992 to the claustrophobia-inducing small holding-quarters for slaves being sent to America, in Dakar, Senegal. Drew intentionally ages-whether with sunlight, water, shredding, or other manipulations-many of the objects he uses. The two gridded sections here together evoke the dichotomy of North and South, of urban and rural. Of similar works, Drew said in 2000, "The grid is my basis of sanity. Otherwise it would just be noise. I mean, these things are loud, but if you know what to listen for, they'll speak to you."

Untitled finds numerous resonances in the AMAM's collection. Found materials are also of importance to other major contemporary African American works in the collection, such as those by Chakaia Booker and Willie Cole. Minimalist sculptural works by Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse, the wooden sculptures of Louise Nevelson, and Joseph Cornell's boxes enter into a meaningful dialogue with Untitled as well.