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:

Amilia Graham, The Crust at Scatological Rites of All Nations ★★☆☆☆

Amilia Graham

The Crust

★★☆☆☆

Each show lasts no more than three hours, and it’s bring-your-own booze.

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting at National Portrait Gallery ★★★☆☆

Jenny Saville

The Anatomy of Painting

★★★☆☆

There is no trace of the visceral in Saville’s gentle pencil studies, for example.

Abdullah Al Saadi, Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia, UAE pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Abdullah Al Saadi

Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia

★★★☆☆

The exhibition’s user experience rivals that of the Apple Store.

Bhenji Ra, Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon at Auto Italia ★☆☆☆☆

Bhenji Ra

Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon

★☆☆☆☆

Such work was once a mere grift. Now, it is an outright stitch-up.

Anna Glantz, Lichens at Approach ★★★☆☆

Anna Glantz

Lichens

★★★☆☆

The clues that Glantz leaves on her surfaces are also traps. There are either too many or not quite enough to follow or fall into. 

Tommy Camerno, Delirious at Filet ★★☆☆☆

Tommy Camerno

Delirious

★★☆☆☆

What’s left of the show are stage props that feed adolescent imaginations with false memories of the long-finished party.

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