As A Former Obituary writer for the Daily Telegraph, Adam McEwen is all too familiar with death. An exhibition of the British-born artist’s work at the Aspen Art Museum, on view January 13 to May 28, takes his fascination with mortality as its cue. In the early aughts, McEwen began writing imaginary obituaries for notable living subjects such as Bill Clinton and Nicole Kidman. “It’s not morbid,” he says, “I definitely know they are going to die. I take death as a perfect rule and work backwards from that.” The faux obits highlight a central theme in the artist’s practice: What constitutes the “real world” when our time—and scope of experiences—on this planet are limited? For McEwen, the real is subjective and dependent on our ability to ignore the constant reminders that life is fleeting. “We live, by nature, optimistically and, therefore, in denial.” His sculptural works—which often represent everyday objects such as yoga mats, air-conditioning units, or car passenger airbags in materials like graphite or concrete—are exercises in denial since they are fundamentally unable to serve their intended purposes. “A graphite air conditioner is guaranteed to fail at what it’s supposed to do,” McEwen explains. “But it tries, despite its obvious limitations. We all try to do our best.” The artist’s focus on the mundane, however, keeps his work from becoming too macabre. For instance, his text message series renders banal mms correspondence gleaned from his and his friends’ phones into framed, haiku-like musings. The content of the texts ranges from making plans to meet someone to blistering breakup words, reminding us that life is lived in the details.
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