.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.
Its elements instantly recognisable in their staggering verisimilitude yet distinctively disconnected from their origins, Adam McEwen’s Font, 2010, stirs curiosity in the viewer through this uncanny monument. Reformulating the commonplace water fountain in cool, tactile, graphite, McEwen transforms the original object, playing with the viewer and enticing them forward through surface texture and a sense of the unexpected. Since 2007, the artist has been wryly referencing everyday objects, recasting them in graphite to create works that are both visually appealing in their surface texture and intellectually engaging through their mediated references to our everyday lives.
In a playful doubling of meaning, McEwen has chosen to use this graphite to create an image of a water-fountain, similar to those that can be found in public spaces, and most commonly, in the playground. Graphite is a material that holds great importance for the artist because of its familiarity and connotations of childhood: he has said that he relishes in the fact that ‘this material is very familiar to pretty much everyone … I feel like anybody from the age of four has probably held an HB pencil and knows the colour of that pencil’ (A. McEwen, quoted in interview with the artist for Art This Week, The Goss-Michael Foundation, April 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnmp3GIKNU0 [accessed 9th September 2014]). This connection to childhood experience, both in subject and medium, connects McEwen’s practice to Jeff Koons. McEwen evokes similar notions of childhood and nostalgia in Font, whilst simultaneously disconcerting his viewer by ensuring that the object is now totally devoid of its original function. This is a quality that can also be found in other objects replicated in this series, such as an ATM machine, air conditioners and light bulbs, rendering them unusable. In playfully reframing objects that appear frequently in our everyday lives, McEwen ensures that a sense of familiarity is retained in tandem with a sense of the weird or unexplained. The artist once commented that his practice is ‘a way of making the ground you stand on slightly less predictable’ (A. McEwen , quoted in Adam McEwen: In Studio, New York, April 2011, https://vimeo.com/27205569 [accessed 9th September 2014]).
McEwen relishes in the surface quality of the graphite, stating that beyond its democratic relationship to people, it is both seductive and suggestive on a material level. The industrially produced form of carbon is particularly sensitive to light, which seems absorbed and reflected all at once, adding a rich visual dimension to the work beyond its conceptual implications. McEwen creates a virtual model of each object using computer technology which is then recreated in three-dimensions by industrial mechanisms, resulting in what he calls ‘machined graphite’ sculptures. Through such technical prowess, the artist is able to produce works that meticulously replicate objects in a subversive manner.
Its elements instantly recognisable in their staggering verisimilitude yet distinctively disconnected from their origins, Adam McEwen’s Font, 2010, stirs curiosity in the viewer through this uncanny monument. Reformulating the commonplace water fountain in cool, tactile, graphite, McEwen transforms the original object, playing with the viewer and enticing them forward through surface texture and a sense of the unexpected. Since 2007, the artist has been wryly referencing everyday objects, recasting them in graphite to create works that are both visually appealing in their surface texture and intellectually engaging through their mediated references to our everyday lives.
In a playful doubling of meaning, McEwen has chosen to use this graphite to create an image of a water-fountain, similar to those that can be found in public spaces, and most commonly, in the playground. Graphite is a material that holds great importance for the artist because of its familiarity and connotations of childhood: he has said that he relishes in the fact that ‘this material is very familiar to pretty much everyone … I feel like anybody from the age of four has probably held an HB pencil and knows the colour of that pencil’ (A. McEwen, quoted in interview with the artist for Art This Week, The Goss-Michael Foundation, April 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnmp3GIKNU0 [accessed 9th September 2014]). This connection to childhood experience, both in subject and medium, connects McEwen’s practice to Jeff Koons. McEwen evokes similar notions of childhood and nostalgia in Font, whilst simultaneously disconcerting his viewer by ensuring that the object is now totally devoid of its original function. This is a quality that can also be found in other objects replicated in this series, such as an ATM machine, air conditioners and light bulbs, rendering them unusable. In playfully reframing objects that appear frequently in our everyday lives, McEwen ensures that a sense of familiarity is retained in tandem with a sense of the weird or unexplained. The artist once commented that his practice is ‘a way of making the ground you stand on slightly less predictable’ (A. McEwen , quoted in Adam McEwen: In Studio, New York, April 2011, https://vimeo.com/27205569 [accessed 9th September 2014]).
McEwen relishes in the surface quality of the graphite, stating that beyond its democratic relationship to people, it is both seductive and suggestive on a material level. The industrially produced form of carbon is particularly sensitive to light, which seems absorbed and reflected all at once, adding a rich visual dimension to the work beyond its conceptual implications. McEwen creates a virtual model of each object using computer technology which is then recreated in three-dimensions by industrial mechanisms, resulting in what he calls ‘machined graphite’ sculptures. Through such technical prowess, the artist is able to produce works that meticulously replicate objects in a subversive manner.