Leonardo Drew
Galerie Lelong & Co. is pleased to present at Frieze London with works by Leonardo Drew, Ficre Ghebreyesus, Samuel Levi Jones, Ana Mendieta, Zilia Sánchez, Tariku Shiferaw, Mildred Thompson, and Barthélémy Toguo. Multiple works are on view for the first time to viewers, including new and recent pieces by the artists.
An overarching theme of our presentation is the use of abstraction as an inquiry of social change and Western art history by artists from the diaspora. Leonardo Drew, who recently achieved a monumental site-specific installation for Art Basel: Unlimited, incorporates pieces reminiscent of his childhood and his first outdoor public art commission at Madison Square Park in 2019 into an energetic sculptural assemblage, Number 348 (2022). Samuel Levi Jones’s abstract painting Nepethean (2022) is composed of deconstructed medical and law books on canvas; taking these materials of authority apart to question their narratives. Tariku Shiferaw continues his ongoing series of paintings One of These Black Boys that inserts references to musical genres that have originated in Black communities into the canon of abstraction. Mildred Thompson’s pastel on paper, Untitled (2003) was produced during the last year of her life, demonstrating her longstanding interest in interpreting physics and astronomy to visually represent scientific theories
and systems that are invisible to the eye. Barthélémy Toguo foregrounds ecological and societal concerns through his abstract paintings that meld human figures and nature. A new large painting and a bronze sculpture by Toguo will be presented at our stand.
The presentation at the fair also complements ongoing institutional exhibitions featuring our artists. In this year’s Venice Biennale curated by Cecilia Alemani, five paintings by Ficre Ghebreyesus are on view, his works evoking the non-linear form of dreams, memories, and storytelling.
Two pioneering contemporary artists from Latin America, Ana Mendieta’s unique hybrid of form and documentation, works that she titled “siluetas,” are fugitive and potent traces of the artist’s inscription of her body in the landscape. Over her 65-year career, Zilia Sánchez has held a distinctive approach to formal abstraction using undulating silhouettes, a muted color palette, and a unique, sensual vocabulary.
