Leonardo Drew

Ubiquity II

★★☆☆☆

On until 7 September 2025

Everything turns to dust: there are many ways to misunderstand entropy. Drew piles up charred and stained wood boards as though to assemble a mountain. Then he does it some more, all the while claiming that this toil finds its own meaning.

That it would is a contradiction in terms. If it does, it’s not in the gallery and not for the viewer. The stack-it-high excess of Drew’s installation aims for spectacle, but its matter is too predetermined to spark revelation. Its smells and textures, likewise, are too obvious and too done already to deceive the senses into oblivion.

The whole get-up’s a ruse, anyhow: a parallel show in the artist’s commercial gallery revealed that the disorder of Drew’s installation work is a side-hustle to cutesy colour-coord grids. It’d take some grand physics to turn the two projects into a before-and-after cartoon strip.


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

Ed Webb-Ingall, A Bedroom for Everyone at PEER ★☆☆☆☆

Ed Webb-Ingall

A Bedroom for Everyone

★☆☆☆☆

How can art improve the lives of communities? Wrong answers only.

The Stars Fell on Alabama at Edel Assanti ★★★☆☆

Mary L. Bennett, Richard Dial, Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, Joe Minter, Mose Tolliver

The Stars Fell on Alabama: Southern Black Renaissance

★★★☆☆

The commercial imperative is understandable. The art historical intent, less clear.

Stephen Willats, Time Tumbler at Victoria Miro

Stephen Willats

Time Tumbler

★★★★☆

Willats orders fragments of time, matter, and space into data packets on one side of the flow chart and puts them to use on the other.

Nicola Turner, Edward Bekkerman at Shtager&Shch ★★☆☆☆

Nicola Turner, Edward Bekkerman

The Song of Psyche: Corners of a Soul's Otherworlds

★★☆☆☆

Who opens a space in Fitzrovia only to fill it with such drivel?

Jack O’Brien, The Reward at Camden Art Centre ★★☆☆☆

Jack O'Brien

The Reward

★★☆☆☆

No narrative emerges from the tonnes of steel and plastic his work consumed

Robert Ryman, Line at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Robert Ryman

Line

★★★☆☆

The artist’s signature becomes a distress call.

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