For this show, McQueen has culled dozens of internet photos documenting the aftermath of car bomb explosions. These images are then transformed by selectively painting out the wafting smoke, and applying a delicate layer of decorative renaissance ornament. The resultant images speak to the cultural and emotional distance that typifies the American worldview.

The absurdity of decorating these violent images also speaks to our individual helplessness in correcting the larger causes behind the events themselves. The sculptural works in the show integrate the formal ornamentation of the cloudburst images with McQueen’s more familiar kinetic works. Using the explosions as templates, he has cast plaster wall sculptures and then carved them into elaborately adorned sculptural reliefs. Some of these clouds will then slowly deteriorate at the hands of a small machine, picking and scraping away at the delicate facade. The dust becomes a powder, the powder becomes a snowfall, the snowfall again a cloudburst.