This two-part project by contemporary artist Leonardo Drew features a monumental outdoor sculpture, City in the Grass, along with a gallery exhibition that provides a more in-depth look at his diverse body of work.
Leonardo Drew: City in the Grass
September 9–January 3, 2020
Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park, Ellipse
NCMA, Raleigh, USA
Leonardo Drew: Making Chaos Legible
East Building, Level B, Meymandi Exhibition Gallery
NCMA, Raleigh, USA
Using a variety of materials—wood, cotton, canvas, paper, steel, aluminum, sand—Drew makes dynamic sculptures that explode and expand into their spaces. These gravity-defying sculptures convey a feeling of barely contained or restrained energy and chaos. “I think of it as making chaos legible,” he says.
City in the Grass, Drew’s first major outdoor sculpture, is both an abstracted cityscape and a colorful flying carpet. Over 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, the work is composed of aluminum panels covered in a mosaic pattern of colored sand, mimicking a Persian carpet. Drew wants his visitors to feel like Gulliver discovering Lilliput as they wander through his bird’s-eye view of a city. “In the end,” he says, “it can be your flying carpet transporting you to wherever you need to be.” Drew sees public art as a shared experience, and for him City in the Grass is not complete until the public appears and interacts with the work, making it whole.
discover more on the NCMA website