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:

The Otolith Group, I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another at greengrassi ★★☆☆☆

The Otolith Group

I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another

★★☆☆☆

The exhibition is a private memorial for Etel Adnan accessible only to members of the art world’s inner circle. And that’s a pity.

Firelei Báez, A Midnight’s Dream at South London Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Firelei Báez

A Midnight's Dream

★☆☆☆☆

Such kitsch might have been fine in a spinster auntie’s bedroom. In the gallery, it is a cruel trick.

Kevin Brisco Jr, But I Hear There Are New Suns at Union Pacific ★★☆☆☆

Kevin Brisco Jr

But I Hear There Are New Suns

★★☆☆☆

I didn’t get to see this show. Perhaps for the best.

Mohammad Ghazali, Trilogy: Then… at Ab-Anbar ★★★★☆

Mohammad Ghazali

Trilogy: Then…

★★★★☆

Repetition and framing are photography’s greatest tricks.

Avery Singer, Free Fall at Hauser & Wirth ★★☆☆☆

Avery Singer

Free Fall

★★☆☆☆

This show would be better without the baggage of the artist’s personal story and even better without the Twin Towers altogether.

Chronoplasticity at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Chronoplasticity

★☆☆☆☆

This may have been a good joke but it’s just too exhausting to look at.

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