Brooklyn-based artist to present unique, commissioned work at Wakefield's Yorkshire Sculpture Park this Spring

The artist’s new work, ‘Number 360’ (2023), which was commissioned for YSP’s 18th-century Chapel, reflects on the weight of collective experience, memory, and the cycles of life and death, decay and regeneration.

This is set to resonate within the historic Chapel, at the Sculpture Park in Wakefield, which was built in 1740, where many lives have been played out for centuries.

An African-American artist born in Tallahassee in 1961 and raised in public housing in Connecticut, Drew has often alluded to socio-political issues in his work, using such symbolically charged materials as rope, rags and rust that relate to the African-American experience.

His newest piece, ‘Number 360,’ will debut at Yorkshire Sculpture Park this spring and consists of blackened and textured coloured paint plywood which has been ripped apart and splintered to form the building blocks of a conical monolith that surges to over five metres in height.

Drew often repurposes material from his previous pieces to make new ones, with much of the wood for ‘Number 360’ coming from ‘Number 341,’ (2022) which was made for Art Basel: Unlimited in Switzerland.

Sarah Coulson, Senior Curator at Yorkshire Sculpture Park said: “Leonardo Drew’s new work will have an incredibly impactful presence in YSP’s Chapel, creating a magnetic relationship between the meditative character of the space and the emotionally charged nature of the piece. This intensity and poignancy of the installation will resonate deeply with the often troubled times in which we live.”