Exhibition Testimony #4: Ubiquity II - Leonardo Drew

The disturbing ambience of the gallery feels like a wildfire, a tsunami, and an earthquake have simultaneously hit. Two towering mounds of blackened junk take up most of the space in the hall, climbing up the walls with the ferociousness of mould. Charred wood is sprawled out in all directions with little distinction between the floor and the walls. Smaller masses of rubbish have metastasised elsewhere in the room, propagating with a will of its own. Shuffling through a pervasive layer of burnt woodchips and debris, the visitors seem flummoxed by the scale of this catastrophe. Standing in the valley between these two unwholesome pyres makes one feel dwarfed by forces beyond human protection. Whether divine or artificial intervention, both God and humanity are up for blame.

Leonardo Drew isn’t blameless either, for this sculptural installation is his portentous handiwork. Continuing Drew’s tradition of material pandemonium, Number 436 (2025), the show’s only piece, spreads its wooden bulk across the main hall of South London Gallery with the grandiosity of an avalanche.

Trying to fathom this organism-like sculpture confuses the senses at first glance. The question of its structural integrity is one that may pass through the minds of some. Without its series of thick, skeletal wooden beams, it would only be a matter of days before gravity claims it. Crozier, the logistics partner of the exhibition, have made an admirable effort in hiding these reinforcements; even if they’re easy to find. Though the piece’s dramatic tension of whether it’ll topple or not vanishes upon noticing its bones, what remains impressive is its form that pierces through multiple contradictions.

Existing in an abstract limbo where disciplines and movements melt down, calling Number 436 a sculpture misses the mark. It is representation bastardised. It’s frantic, gestural quality confirms Drew’s citation of abstract expressionism as a key influence on his style[1].

It’s difficult to imagine what these blighted heaps used to be as you scrutinise their weird assemblage of wood, newspapers, shattered mirrors, and colour. They tell a story too splintered to construct. Through his dedication to the minutiae of his materials, disparate forms and representations come crashing into each other to create pieces of wood that look like computer circuitry or uncut crystals. Washed up remnants of a doomed civilisation.

Eschewing the histories already embedded in found objects, Drew has hand-painted and spoiled each fragment in a process that he describes as becoming the weather[2]. The tendency for human existence to deteriorate and wear its surroundings is suggested as strongly as its impact on the weather. With Trump’s administration resorting to open climate denial, this artwork reads as an apocalyptic aftermath.

Number 436 wobbles over the boundary between (dis)order as if it were without its wooden beams. Calculation and randomness are required equally in the curation of chaos.

According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy - the measure of disorder - in a closed system increases with time. A shattered teacup has higher entropy than when it rested whole on the table. The heat death of the universe represents the point of maximum entropy; a cold, dead, endless waste of particles with no energy to interact and order themselves. In this model of the universe, every action, every utterance, every breathe, and the motion of every atom increases entropy, using up the vast but finite energy of the cosmos.

Drew’s fascination with this concept imbues his strange debris with the behaviour of molecules swirling around in a vacuum; chaotically dancing and crashing into each other, dispersing their harrowing energy. The piece, thus, feels like a moment frozen in time – each fragment of rubbish vibrating with the restlessness of suspended animation. This dilapidated diorama is vividly reminiscent of Cornelia Parker’s Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), the infamous sculptural recreation of a shed blown to smithereens. Both artists share an affinity for random, unquantifiable matter that’s neither here nor there. Though Number 436 lacks the will-it-won’t-it of falling over, there’s the lingering feeling time will suddenly thaw, propelling this maelstrom back into visceral motion. But some queer instinct tells me it’ll move backwards through time rather than forward; chaos restraining itself into order. The shards of a teacup pouncing off the floor and becoming whole again on the table. With the hands of time reversed, the question of what all this detritus will arrange itself back into is yours to answer.

The title of the show, Ubiquity II, encapsulates things ever-present… The rising entropy of the universe or the unignorable signs of climate breakdown are examples of public ubiquities. Through his sculpture, Drew asks what’s so ubiquitous in your private life? Everyone’s got problems and fears orbiting them like a swarm of trash. In recognition of that, he’s constructed a monument that commemorates and dwarfs your worries. “My work has always operated as a mirror,” he says, “stand in front of it and you’ll find yourself.”[3] Hence why he numbers rather than titles his works. It often takes immeasurable ugliness like for reality to lay itself bare before you. A glint of hope blooms. Random rubbish has found sanctity as an art installation. Order sometimes emerges from chaos. Things move in cycles. Worries can give way to bliss. Death merely returns what belonged to nature in the first place.