ADAM MCEWEN
2019-01-21Expanding his practice into more prosaic, but also more challenging, territory. The works unpack and activate McEwen’s signature graphite sculptures, which are here mounted on rough plywood faced with aluminum and coated with an image of the subjects of the sculptures themselves.
The objects present in McEwen’s assemblages are so ubiquitous one’s associations are likely to go beyond the physical or aesthetic. Banal, familiar, verging on the outdated and abject, they are nonetheless freighted—differently for each viewer—with the charge of recognition. Here, shot in the artist’s studio using materials at hand as backdrop, items that were used by McEwen for the purposes of creating precise, digital models for their graphite doppelgängers—a thermostat, a hotel door handle with card reader, a Styrofoam food tray—return and compete as subjects in two dimensions. Shifting moments, captured under the flash of an iPhone, are reduced to halftone transparencies and layered in vibrating triads of reds, violets and acid greens.
Opposite – Stalker, 2019
Exhibition runs through to February 16th, 2019
Petzel Gallery
35 E 67th Street
NY 10065
New York
