Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present A Real Slow Drag, an exhibition by the New York-based British artist Adam McEwen. The show consists of sculptures, drawings and photographs made by McEwen over the last three years, most of which have not been previously exhibited in New York, but which in many instances draw their inspiration from the city. Many of the works are made of machined graphite, a material McEwen has employed since 2007. Each meticulously carved sculpture reproduces the original in scale and detail. Installed in the voided-out domestic setting of a townhouse on 64th St, these mute representations of everyday objects – an air conditioner, a drinking fountain, an unfurled yoga mat – have a deadened, perfected air that is at odds with their banality and intimacy.
McEwen’s work resides somewhere between the celebratory and the funereal. It identifies strands of European melancholy in the Pop object, and the scuffs of history and consumerism on the sheened surfaces of minimalism. His obituaries of living subjects highlight the blurred line between history and fiction. His repurposing of the over-familiar creates momentary ruptures which, in the words of one writer, “jolt us temporarily out of our indifference, owing to over-exposure, toward the signs that dominate our daily lives.”
Adam McEwen’s work has been included in numerous group shows including Haunted, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010), Beg, Borrow and Steal, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2009), The Reach of Realism, MoCA Miami (2009), Into Me/Out of Me, PS1 / MOMA, New York, and the Whitney Biennial 2006, New York. In 2010 he curated Fresh Hell at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, as part of their Carte Blanche series.