Adam McEwen Dresden (Phosphorbrandbombe) 2006 phosphorescent paint and chewing gum on canvas 90" x 70" [installation view]

Adam McEwen Dresden 2006 acrylic and chewing gum on canvas 90" x 130" [installation view]

[detail of above]

I'm not even going to start addressing this show in writing myself. I could go on forever about the subjects which inspired Adam McEwen's "8:00 for 8:30", installed at Niclole Klagsbrun this month, historical crimes of necessity with which I am probably too much engaged. I'm going to turn the task over to João Ribas, writing in The New York Sun because he pulls together their different strings with intelligence and sensitivilty while never losing sight of the art which holds them together in this very smart exhibition. An excerpt:

The ability to deal out inhumanity with equanimity is at the core of British-born artist Adam McEwen's second solo show,"8 for 8:30," at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery. A timely meditation on the cold rationality of the military-industrial complex, Mr. McEwen's shrewdly political show asks more questions than it tries to answer.

Yet by looking at the horror of the Allied bombings of Nazi Germany, and the post-war American boom that was its euphoric aftermath, the show makes the case that the link between profit and obliteration applies today more than ever. First raze, then rebuild, and as Kurt Vonnegut likes to say, so it goes.