Adam Pendleton

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984, Richmond, USA) is a conceptual artist whose career has grown exponentially in a multidisciplinary practice. His work relies on the potential of language, regularly incorporating excerpts from texts or words. Drawing on the movements of Dadaism, Minimalism and Conceptual Art, he critically analyses relationships between past and present, proposing alternative interpretations. By bringing references to 20th century cultural movements into his work, privileging those that relate to the African-American political and social past, he encourages us to reflect on issues such as racial controversies in the USA. It is this fusion between realities, cultures and times, image and language, race, politics and the avant-garde, that makes up his concept Black Dada (inspired by the poem “Black Dada Nihilismus” by Amiri Baraka). Pendleton attended the private Collegiate School and, in 2000, an art course in Italy (Artspace Independent Study Programme, Pietrasanta). In 2002, he began his artistic career in New York. In 2004, he had her first solo exhibition Being Here (University of Illinois, Urbana and Wallspace Gallery, New York) and participated in three group exhibitions in the same year. In 2007, through the performance The Revival, commissioned for Performa 07 (Stephen Weiss Studio, New York), he broadened his means of communicating his art by reciting a sermon accompanied by a gospel choir. In 2008, he created Black Dada Paintings, probably his most famous work. These abstract works are characterised by a graphic language with monochrome backgrounds, in which “black dada” letters stand out. At the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009 he presented Band, a video that includes images of a young Black Panther. Thematic continuity is an important feature of his work. In 2012, Pendleton became the youngest artist to sign a contract with Pace Gallery since the 1970s. His intense international career includes participation in the Biennale di Venezia (56th Venice Biennale, Belgian Pavilion, 2015). His work is represented in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Tate Modern (London), and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok, Vienna). In 2024, the artist received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2025, his next solo exhibition Love, Queen will open at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.).

 

Francisca Morais Vaz