Time Lapse: Leonardo Drew's NUMBER 215B

Time Lapse: Leonardo Drew's NUMBER 215B at the University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in "Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation." In Number 215B, shards of wood splinter across the wall, jutting out with ragged edges as if frozen, mid-explosion, recalling the wreckage wrought by the “natural” disasters prevalent in our changing climate. The assemblage appears to be composed of found materials splotched with paint, perhaps the remnants of recent tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires. In actuality, the sculptural relief is painstakingly made from new, raw materials that Drew has conditioned to appear time-worn. He describes his process of aging the wood through burning, oxidization, and decay in elemental terms: “I become the weather.” Extending out from the gallery wall and spilling onto the floor, the artwork enacts how the built environment dominates our lives but is essentially fragile and temporary. With the artist as “weather,” the grand-scale installation offers a sensorial experience of motion and transformation.