Adam McEwen, Sidewalks
( details )
Book
21 × 29 cm, 108 pages
2022

Adam McEwen (b. 1965, London, England) walks with his head hung low, not in sorrow but in study, charting the humdrum topography of a city’s streets—its strata of gum once-chewed, crags of cigarettes once-puffed, and rivers of coffee or urine or maybe some unknowable juice. Sidewalks presents McEwen’s inkjet-on-sponge paintings, collected here in their entirety for the first time, alongside the “ambient poetry” of Tan Lin.

Published by Zolo Press, ISBN: 978-1-7345275-7-5

A photograph of the front cover of Sidewalks on a light grey background. The title, Sidewalks,author, Adam McEwen, and Publisher, Zolo Press, are printed in light pink geometric sans-serif type atop a black-and-white image of pavent with a manhole cover and scattered flecks of spit-out gum.
The book's inside cover. The left page is blank. The right lists, again, the title, author, and publisher—this time in larger black type.
A spread with two detailed images of one of McEwen's inkjet-on-sponge paintings. The teal sponge has a martian surface pocked with craters.
Pages 28 and 29. On 28, is an image of green-tinted sponge painting depicting a half-smoked cigarette that has been crushed underfoot and the streaks of an unknown fluid, which is surrounded by white space on all sides. On 29, is a larger image of a grey sponge painting, this one depicting a sidewalk dotted with blackened chewing gum.
Pages 34 and 35, each adorned with an image of a four-color sponge-painting.
Tan Lin's concrete poem 'Trap I Logic,' is arrayed in three columns and four rows, each of which contains a three-line stanza. It juxtaposes an image of a yellow sponge-painting of rhombic sun cast on concrete.
Tan Lin's third poem, 'Trap III Image Ditto Figure 8,' comprised of three columns of nine rows, with two lines per row. At right is a sponge-painting of a gum-dotted sidewalk, each quadrant of which is rendered atop a different color.
A detail of a unnamed sponge-painting, which from close resembles the ameobas of a soldier's camouflage. The right page is blank.
The book's back cover, containing the left half of the sponge-painting printed on the front.
( up )