While you can take the artist out of the U.K., you can’t necessarily take the U.K. out of the artist—or so it would seem with the work of Adam McEwen, a London native who’s lived in New York since 2000. Like a lot of Brits of his generation, McEwen is prone to delivering big statements that are heavy on sardonic attitude. His latest show, “Harvest,” delves into infrastructural constraints on movement—of people, ideas, information—in the global age.
As he’s done previously, McEwen transforms life’s daily furnishings into actual-size sculptures milled from graphite blocks. Here, plastic tubs used by airport security get the treatment, along with a pair of giant mainframe supercomputers. Their deadened sheen sucks in the space around them and, with it, any emotional resonance beyond the wow factor of their verisimilitude. Just as numb are large cellulose sponge panels, printed with blurry photos of a tunnel from a speeding car. Nearby, a towering set of stairs to nowhere is shaped like the letter K (for Joseph K. from The Trial, perhaps?).
Unfortunately, McEwen’s institutional allusions never amount to a convincing institutional critique. Instead of reaping truth to power, “Harvest” produces a bummer crop.