Adam McEwen

Adam McEwen works in graphite, cast iron, sponge, and the territory between obituary and art history. His practice began with writing death notices for living subjects — Bill Clinton, Jeff Koons — highlighting the slippage between document and fiction, prophecy and joke.

The graphite sculptures that followed carry that same weight: urinals, airbags, elevator buttons, ATMs rendered in the material of pencil lead, mounted and deadpan. A reverse Midas touch, as one writer put it — the gleam turned to ash, Minimalism recast as melancholy.

He studied at Oxford and CalArts, showed in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and has exhibited at the Guggenheim, the New Museum, and Aspen Art Museum. His work is held in collections including the Whitney, the Rubell Family Collection, and the Jumex Collection. He lives and works in New York.