Walk onto Ocean Beach and you'll find the kind of jumbled wood pieces – shards, strips, blocks, and burnt remains – that appear in Leonardo Drew's new artwork called Number 38S. Wood is Drew's domain. The canvases he assembles (and occasionally paints) are oddly sublime. It's unusual to see artwork in small galleries that takes wood as its mandate and splays it so provocatively into large puzzles. Number 38S is eight feet by eight feet, and several companion pieces in Drew's new exhibit at Anthony Meier Fine Arts also measure similarly outsized dimensions. An internationally acclaimed artist, Drew can go much bigger; his works at museum shows frequently take up entire rooms. And he can go smaller, too; at Anthony Meier, several new works are just two feet by two feet, but – like his large pieces – are intricate, brown stitches of bark and other broken-off tree parts. At whatever size, Drew's works are visual feasts that repackage the detritus nature left behind for anyone to use anew.
415-351-1400
