Adam Pendleton

Last updated
Adam Pendleton
Born1984
Richmond, Virginia
Nationality American
Known for Conceptual Art, Collage, Painting, Performance, Silkscreen, Video,
Website www.adampendleton.net

Adam Pendleton (born 1984) is an American conceptual artist known for his multi-disciplinary practice, involving painting, silkscreen, collage, video, performance, [1] [2] and word art. [3] His work often involves the investigation of language and the recontextualization of history through appropriated imagery. [1]

Contents

His art has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the New Museum, and other shows internationally, including La Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. [4] He has been featured twice in Forbes Magazine 's "30 Under 30" list. [5] [6]

The artist splits his time between New York City and Germantown, New York.[ when? ] [7] [8]

Early life

Pendleton was born in 1984, Richmond, Virginia. [1] After finishing highschool early, he studied art in Northern Italy. [9] After art studies, he went to New York in 2002, at the age of 18, with the intention of becoming an artist. [7]

Approach

In an interview with Bomb magazine, Thom Donovan describes Adam Pendleton as "a rare artist in his ability to synthesize disciplines and mediums, and to steer with collaborators toward 'total works,' which yet remain drafts of a larger essayistic practice. His works—like those of his many avant-garde forebears—are experimental in the truest sense. He sets up a laboratory in which our social and political desires can appear, however fleetingly. ...With Pendleton's work, even though we are often left with aporias and blind spots, we feel the force of historical matter self-organizing and finding form beyond representability and essence." [10]

Pendleton often juxtaposes imagery, language, music and concepts from a variety of subjects such as philosophy and important historical movements, creating complex work that allows for multiple interpretations. He has often focused on significant moments in Black American history such as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and the recent Black Lives Matter movement that emerged following the killing of Trayvon Martin. [11]

Career and work

In 2005 he joined the Yvon Lambert Gallery and had his first solo show, Deeper Down There. [7] The show featured two-color canvases with silkscreened lines from modern African-American literature and music, as well as paintings resembling enlarged record album covers. The New York Times wrote that Pendleton "takes a coolly intellectual approach to hot subject matter". It likened his work to that of Glenn Ligon, Lawrence Weiner and Ed Ruscha, and praised it for its "provocative reticence." [12]

In his 2007 performance piece, The Revival, the artist, dressed in a white tuxedo jacket, black pants and bright green shoes, gave a sermon while accompanied by a 30-person gospel choir. Pendleton's homily, titled "a dream of an uncommon language," featured language borrowed from poets such as John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein and Donald Hall, [7] as well as "politico-speak and strident gay protest". [13] Also included in the revival were "testimonials" from contemporary artist Liam Gillick and poet Jena Osman. [7] [8] Writing of the performance The New York Times art critic Roslyn Sulcas described Mr. Pendleton as "the most charismatic performer I've seen on stage for a long time." The piece was part of Performa Biennial 07 and was performed at Stephan Weiss studio. [13]

The 2009 video installation BAND tracks the process of the band Deerhoof as they develop and record a new song, I Did Crimes for You. [14] The video is loosely based on Godard's film Sympathy for the Devil , which features The Rolling Stones recording their song of the same name. [8] In BAND, footage of Deerhoof rehearsing is edited to include fragments from a 1971 documentary, Teddy, about a young member of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles. The song's lyrics consist of confrontational rhetoric characteristic of the late 1960s, while the voiceover from the documentary speaks of the prospects of change and the efficacy of such violence. [15] Speaking of the video's relationship to Godard's film, Pendleton has said "it is not something that exists in its shadow, but rather in contrast to it." [8]

In 2010, Pendleton was featured in MoMA PS1's Greater New York exhibition. His installation, The Abolition of Alienated Labor, included drawings and images appropriated from the 1950s African independence movement and from a 1960s Godard film, silk-screened onto large mirrors. [14] The title of the work comes from a 1963 Situationist work in which Guy Debord painted that phrase over an industrially produced painting by Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio. [14] The artist explains that "the works are framed within the context of the ethos of experimental gestures, the potential of a political framework—or rather, of a politicized framework." [14]

"Black Dada" is a concept that informs much of the artist's work. [7] There is no explicit definition [7] but the artist has described the idea as "a way to talk about the future while talking about the past. It is our present moment." [14] The Black Dada series of paintings contain a partial view of Sol LeWitt's cube sculptures, accompanied by one or more letters derived from the phrase "Black Dada." The phrase comes from the 1964 poem "Black Dada Nihilismus" by Amiri Baraka. [7] Pendleton states that the two words merge two ideas: "Dada, meaning 'yes, yes' and black as an open-ended signifier." [8] In 2011, Pendleton's Black Dada (LK/LC/AA) was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art. [16]

System of Display is a series of works involving mirrors, letters and silkscreened images appropriated from art publications and other books. [7] [8] The images include photographs of the Fridericianum during the 1955 Documenta [15] and of a couple dancing in the street during a celebration of independence in Congo, as well as stills of Anna Karina from Jean-Luc Godard's film Made in U.S.A . [7] Pendleton has said, "I am working to establish a system of display, of organization. I want to create a situation where we're inclined to rethink notions of the past and the future, as well as our ability to understand them enough to make reductive statements." [2]

Becoming Imperceptible opened at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans in 2016, and traveled to MOCA Cleveland and MCA Denver. [17] Its name comes from the philosophical writing of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Becoming Imperceptible aims to create a "counter-portitrature" by blending the approaches of the historical avant garde with historical Black movements. The effect is the merging of disparate ideas, people and imagery, collectively blending and engaging each other in the space of art. [18]

In 2017, Pendleton published the Black Dada Reader, a sourcebook containing photocopied texts by Haryette Mullen, Gertrude Stein, Sun Ra, Hugo Ball, Stokely Carmichael, Ad Reinhardt, Joan Retallack, Ron Silliman, Adrian Piper, and many others, as well as newly commissioned essays from several writers and curators. The book was named one of the best art books of 2017 by the New York Times. [19]

In 2020, Pendleton created a unique and provocative cover for The New York Times Magazine 's July 4th edition which featured a Frederick Douglass speech with imagery overlaid, suggesting a disconnect with America's promise of freedom versus its continued post-slavery caste system. [20]

Other activities

Art market

In 2012, Pendleton signed with Pace Gallery at age 28, the youngest artist to do so since the 1970s. His first show with Pace was at the gallery's Soho London branch in the fall of 2012. [7]

Since 2020, Pendleton has also been working with David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles. [23] Famous collectors include Steven A. Cohen, Leonardo DiCaprio and Venus Williams. [24]

In 2023, Pendleton and Venus Williams curated a charity auction hosted by Pace Gallery. Co-organized with Sotheby's, proceeds will support a preservation project for the childhood home of Nina Simone. [25] Pendleton jointly purchased Simone's childhood home in 2017 along with Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson, and Julie Mehretu. [25] [26]

Exhibitions

Selected solo exhibitions

Selected group exhibitions

Selected public collections

[30]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Jonas</span> American visual artist (born 1936)

Joan Jonas is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and one of the most important artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jonas' projects and experiments were influential in the creation of video performance art as a medium. Her influences also extended to conceptual art, theatre, performance art and other visual media. She lives and works in New York and Nova Scotia, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cindy Sherman</span> American photographer

Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.

Scott Benzel is an American visual artist, musician, performance artist, and composer. Benzel is a member of the faculty of the School of Art at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roselee Goldberg</span> American art historian

RoseLee Goldberg is an American-based art historian, author, critic and curator of performance art. She is most well known as being the founder and director of Performa, a performance art organisation. She is also currently a Clinical Associate Professor of Arts Administration at New York University.

Alison Saar is a Los Angeles, California based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin American folk art and spirituality. Saar is well known for "transforming found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Durant</span>

Sam Durant is a multimedia artist whose works engage social, political, and cultural issues. Often referencing American history, his work explores culture and politics, engaging subjects such as the civil rights movement, southern rock music, and modernism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lorna Simpson</span> American photographer and multimedia artist

Lorna Simpson is an American photographer and multimedia artist whose works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 1990, she became the first African-American woman to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. She came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with photo-text installations such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal that questioned the nature of identity, gender, race, history and representation. Simpson continues to explore these themes in relation to memory and history using photography, film, video, painting, drawing, audio, and sculpture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nayland Blake</span> American visual artist

Nayland Blake is an American artist whose focus is on interracial attraction, same-sex love, and intolerance of the prejudice toward them. Their mixed-media work has been variously described as disturbing, provocative, elusive, tormented, sinister, hysterical, brutal, and tender.

Sanford Biggers is a Harlem-based interdisciplinary artist who works in film/video, installation, sculpture, music, and performance. An L.A. native, he has lived and worked in New York City since 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howardena Pindell</span> American painter

Howardena Pindell is an American artist, curator and educator. She is known as a painter and mixed media artist, her work explores texture, color, structures, and the process of making art; it is often political, addressing the intersecting issues of racism, feminism, violence, slavery, and exploitation. She is known for the wide variety of techniques and materials used in her artwork; she has created abstract paintings, collages, "video drawings," and "process art."

Mika Rottenberg is a contemporary Argentine-Israeli video artist who lives and works in New York City. Rottenberg is best known for her surreal video and installation work that often "investigates the link between the female body and production mechanisms". Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Will Rawls is an American contemporary choreographer, performance artist, curator and writer based in New York City and with continuing projects in Europe. He has choreographed solo works and group works as well as danced professionally with established dance companies. He is also one half of the performance art collaborative, Dance Gang, with Kennis Hawkins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juliana Huxtable</span> American artist

Juliana Huxtable is an American artist, writer, performer, DJ, and co-founder of the New York–based nightlife project Shock Value. Huxtable has exhibited and performed at a number of venues including Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Project Native Informant, Artists Space, the New Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Institute of Contemporary Arts. Huxtable's multidisciplinary art practice explores a number of projects, such as the internet, the body, history, and text, often through a process she calls "conditioning." Huxtable is a published author of two books and a member of the New York City–based collective House of Ladosha. She is on the roster of the talent agency Discwoman, a New York based collective and talent agency that books DJs for parties and events around the world. She previously lived and worked in New York City, and has been based in Berlin since 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martine Syms</span> American artist (born in 1988)

Martine Syms is an American artist residing in Los Angeles, specializing in various mediums including publishing, video, installation, and performance. Her artistic endeavors revolve around themes of identity, particularly the representation of the self, with a focus on subjects like feminism and black culture. Syms frequently employs humor and social commentary as vehicles for exploration within her work. In 2007, she introduced the term "Conceptual Entrepreneur" to describe her artistic approach.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennie C. Jones</span> American artist

Jennie C. Jones is an African-American artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been described, by Ken Johnson, as evoking minimalism, and paying tribute to the cross-pollination of different genres of music, especially jazz. As an artist, she connects most of her work between art and sound. Such connections are made with multiple mediums, from paintings to sculptures and paper to audio collages. In 2012, Jones was the recipient of the Joyce Alexander Wien Prize, one of the biggest awards given to an individual artist in the United States. The prize honors one African-American artist who has proven their commitment to innovation and creativity, with an award of 50,000 dollars. In December 2015 a 10-year survey of Jones's work, titled Compilation, opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas.

Performa is a non-profit arts organization well-known for the Performa Biennial, a festival of performance art that happens every two year in various venues and institutions in New York City. Performa was founded in 2004 by art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg. Since 2005, Performa curators have included Charles Aubin, Defne Ayas, Tairone Bastien, Mark Beasley, Adrienne Edwards, Laura McLean-Ferris, Kathy Noble, Job Piston, and Lana Wilson. The organization commissions new works and tours performances premiered at the biennial. It also manages the work of choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer.

Garrett Bradley is an American filmmaker and director of short films, feature films, documentaries, and television. She is known for blending cinematic genres to explore the larger sociopolitical significance of the everyday moments of her subjects' lived experience.

Adrienne Edwards is a New York–based art curator, scholar, and writer. Edwards is currently the Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Legacy Russell is an American curator, writer, and author of Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, published by Verso Books in 2020. In 2021, the performance and experimental art institution The Kitchen announced Russell as the organization's next executive director and chief curator. From 2018 to 2021, she was the associate curator of exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Guadalupe Maravilla, formerly known as Irvin Morazan, is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. At the age of eight, Maravilla was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War. In 2016, Maravilla became a U.S. citizen and adopted the name Guadalupe Maravilla in solidarity with his undocumented father, who uses Maravilla as his last name. As an acknowledgment to his past, Maravilla grounds his practice in the historical and contemporary contexts belonging to undocumented communities and the cancer community. Maravilla's studio is located in Brooklyn, New York.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Adam Pendleton," pacegallery.com . Retrieved April 8, 2013.
  2. 1 2 Jess Wilcox, " Black Dada: A Conversation with Adam Pendleton," Archived 2012-11-24 at the Wayback Machine Art in America , March 2, 2009.
  3. ↑ Cohen, Alina (5 January 2019). "13 Artists Who Highlight the Power of Words". Artsy. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  4. ↑ "30 under 30: Art & Style; Adam Pendleton, Artist, 28," Forbes Magazine . Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  5. ↑ Susan Adams, " 30 Under 30: Art & Design," Forbes Magazine , December 19, 2011.
  6. ↑ Susan Adams, " 30 Under 30: The Bright Young Stars of Art and Style," Forbes Magazine , December 17, 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Adam Pendleton Brings Black Dada to MoMA and Pace," GalleristNY , April 6, 2012.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Thom Donovan, "Adam Pendleton," Bomb , 114/Winter 2011.
  9. ↑ Pogrebin, Robin (2018-05-03). "A Young Artist and Disrupter Plants His Flag for Black Lives". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-02-21.
  10. ↑ "BOMB Magazine — Adam Pendleton by Thom Donovan". bombmagazine.org. Archived from the original on 1 February 2016. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  11. ↑ Adam Pendleton in Art in America.
  12. ↑ Ken Johnson, "Art in Review; Adam Pendleton," The New York Times , May 20, 2005.
  13. 1 2 Roslyn Sulcas, "Performa 07: Adam Pendleton, Artists and Statistics," The New York Times , November 4, 2007.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Kevin McGarry, " Greater New Yorkers | Adam Pendleton," T (The New York Times Style Magazine) , May 27, 2010.
  15. 1 2 Tom Williams, "Adam Pendleton," Art in America , February 9, 2011.
  16. ↑ Elizabeth Henderson, "Adam Pendleton and Mark Manders: Looking at Language in Two Recent Acquisitions," MoMa.org , March 10, 2011.
  17. ↑ "Adam Pendleton: Becoming Imperceptible | Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans". Cacno.org. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
  18. ↑ "Becoming Imperceptible': Adam Pendleton in New Orleans". Wallpaper.com. 29 February 2016. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
  19. ↑ Cotter, Holland; Smith, Roberta; Farago, Jason (2017-12-14). "The Best Art Books of 2017". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-03-07.
  20. ↑ "Behind the Cover: Racial Caste in America". The New York Times . 2 July 2020. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
  21. ↑ Board of Directors Drawing Center.
  22. ↑ Maximilíano Durón (March 2019), ICA VCU Adds Adam Pendleton, Adrienne Edwards to Advisory Board Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU.
  23. ↑ Melanie Gerlis (March 27, 2020), Art markets find high-tech ways to reach buyers   Financial Times .
  24. ↑ Gamerman, Ellen (16 April 2015). "Adam Pendleton: The Making of an Art-World Star". Wsj.com. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
  25. 1 2 Karen K. Ho (March 13, 2023). "Venus Williams and Adam Pendleton to Co-Host Auction at Pace, Benefitting Nina Simone's Childhood Home". ARTNews.
  26. ↑ Randy Kennedy (March 2, 2017). "Saving Nina Simone's Birthplace as an Act of Art and Politics". New York Times.
  27. ↑ "Adam Pendleton: Who Is Queen? | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2023-02-24.
  28. ↑ Pendleton, Adam (2021). Adam Pendleton : Who is queen? : a reader. Alec Mapes-Frances, Stuart Comer, Adrienne Edwards, Mario Gooden, Danielle A. Jackson, Lynne Tillman, Jason Michael Adams, Museum of Modern Art. New York. ISBN   978-1-63345-110-0. OCLC   1144877248.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  29. ↑ "Adam Pendleton Exhibition". Leconsortium.fr.
  30. ↑ "Pace Gallery - Adam Pendleton - Documents". www.pacegallery.com. Archived from the original on 30 August 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2022.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.