Adam McEwen

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition “11.11.11” by Adam McEwen, his first in Los Angeles.

The numerical and graphic symmetry of the title gives an epochal feel to this major exhibition by McEwen, which makes explicit the interrelationships between individual works and persistent themes in his oeuvre via a specifically devised scenography.

Wall-size grids of black-and-white photographic wallpaper—from the firestorming of Dresden, to McEwen dressed up as Bomber Harris (the British air commander who perfected the technique of carpet-bombing German cities during WWII), and gum-spattered New York sidewalks—line several galleries, drawing an analogy between planned destruction and urban desecration. They provide backdrops for droll “gum” paintings and impassive, machined graphite “paintings” that recall Minimalist compositions but which are, in fact, modeled on the figured, non-slip metal doors inset into New York sidewalks.

In 1994, McEwen made a drawing of a block, labeling it BLOCK OF GRAPHITE. But it was not until 2007 that, fascinated by the possibilities of this common but often unrecognized material, he began producing via industrial machining finely carved graphite sculptures that mimic real objects. In this exhibition, precise representations of everyday items—a water cooler, a roll gate, a safe—animate the galleries with their eerie reticence, a series of simulacra perfectly and perversely rendered in what is, in reality, dark, light-absorbing, compressed carbon. (The dust from the graphite industry is sold on to pencil companies.)