Adam McEwen was born in 1965 in London, England. He received his B.A. in 1987 from Christ Church, Oxford, and then received his B.F.A. in 1991 from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. After graduating, McEwen began working for the Daily Telegraph writing obituaries, a job that would in turn inspire some of his earliest works: pseudo-obituaries of living subjects that blurred the line between history and fiction. Contextual inversion, phantom presence and sardonic humour are all recurring aspects of Mc Ewen’s work, which also embraces a variety of unusual media from chewed gum to machinated graphite. His repurposing of the over-familiar, whether information or a literal object, creates momentary ruptures, which in the words of one writer, “jolt us temporarily out of our indifference, owing to over-exposure, toward the signs that dominate our daily lives.”
McEwen has exhibited extensively internationally with numerous galleries and institutions. His first solo museum show was held at the Aspen Art Museum in 2017, though he has also exhibited as part of group exhibitions at the Winter Palace and 21er Haus, Vienna (2016); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015, 2008); Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2013); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010).
McEwen’s work features in numerous international collections, including: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; De la Cruz Collection, Miami; The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, Scotland and Arts Council Collection, London.