Adam McEwen

Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition by the New York–based British artist Adam McEwen in Hong Kong comprising a cross section of his work, including new paintings as well as sculptures made in graphite, a material with which he is closely linked. The artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia, it will open on February 2.

McEwen’s practice tends to foreground and isolate banal objects—a yoga mat, a drinking fountain, plastic cups—to the degree that they become unstuck from their familiar, reassuring meanings. His sculptures in graphite or cast iron, for all intents and purposes straightforward and accurate renditions, suggest a sense of the uncanny and a feeling of slight displacement.

Similarly, his recent paintings present everyday things in a simplified graphic language that decontextualizes them, freeing them from their usual connotations. The subjects are chosen for no other reason than that, for McEwen, they seem to hold some import: a railway arch near his studio, a drawing of a lion that symbolizes power and strength, a pair of street lamps near Grand Central Station in New York that form a kind of entranceway, a sword found hidden behind a radiator when the artist renovated his apartment.

By simplifying their depiction, these subjects become accessible and the relationship between subject and viewer becomes stronger and more charged than the one between the subject and its everyday meaning.