Adam Pendleton
Spanning painting, performance, video and writing, Adam Pendleton’s (b. 1984) practice is profoundly eclectic and critical. The artist engages with problematics inherent to mechanisms of representation, delving into language, abstraction and the notion of ‘blackness’. Working predominantly in black and white, Pendleton unpicks and deconstructs dominant historical, political, socio-cultural and aesthetic discourses, putting forward alternative narratives. Within his own concept of ‘Black Dada’, the artist investigates the past in order to ‘imagine alternate presents’. Relying on appropriation, Pendleton creates works that merge references ranging from Dadaism to the Black Arts Movement.
‘Pendleton is a rare artist in his ability to synthesise disciplines and mediums, and to steer with collaborators towards “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. Historical materials (images, sounds, and printed language) become a point of departure for making present what cannot be grasped by representations of history (narratives, archives): the emergence of events and situations, which can only become known retroactively. Recent live art has rarely been more conscious of its origins in civil disobedience and the civil rights movement, where we view the body as a site of social antagonism, and as a “case” for struggles for recognition and justice. 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. We discover the protest of the object—works of art and performance resisting their subsumption by common epistemological frameworks and modes of narration posing as truth.’
T. Donovan, ‘Adam Pendleton’, in BOMB Magazine, 2011
Image: Untitled (After Julius Eastman), 2019, silkscreen ink and spray paint on canvas, 91.4 x 71.1 cm.; 36 x 28 in. Photo: Andy Romer
Artist Interview
Selected Works
Solo Exhibitions
Group Exhibitions
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
Biography
VITA
1984
Born in Richmond, USA
2000–2002
Artspace Independent Study Program, Pietrasanta
Lives and works in Germantown and Brooklyn, New York
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Allen Art Collection, Oberlin
Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Centro de Art Mayo CA2M, Madrid
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
DePaul Art Museum, Chicago
Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis
Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker
Longlati Foundation, Shanghai
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris
Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Paris
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Tate, London
University of Chicago
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
To Divide By
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis
Blackness, White, and Light
Mumok, Vienna
2022
These Things We’ve Done Together
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal
Adam Pendleton: Toy Solider
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Maag Areal, Zurich
Adam Pendleton: In Abstraction
Pace Gallery, Geneva
2021
Paper
Pace Gallery, Palm Beach
Drawings
Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris
Who Is Queen?
The Museum of Modern Art, New York (catalogue)
David Adjaye Adam Pendleton
Pace Gallery, Hong Kong (catalogue)
2020
Begin Again
David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles
Consortium Museum, Dijon
Elements of Me
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (catalogue)
2019
These Elements of Me
Pace Gallery, Seoul
Who We Are
Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (catalogue)
NO THING: Adam Pendleton / Pope L.
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich
2018
Liam Gillick Adam Pendleton
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York
Our Ideas
Pace Gallery, London (catalogue)
New Works
Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon
what a day was this
Lever House, New York
List Projects
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge
2017
Which We Can
Pace Gallery, Palo Alto
Front Room
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
shot him in the face
KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin
Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
Becoming Incredible
Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland
Just back from Los Angeles: A portrait of Yvonne Rainer
Performa video comission premier at Anthology Film Archives, New York
2016
Midnight in America
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich
Becoming Imperceptible
Contemporary arts center New Orleans, New Orleans;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2017) (catalogue)
2015
New Work
Pace Gallery, London
2014
Selected Works
Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago
Pace Gallery, New York
2012
I'll Be Your
Pace Gallery, London (catalogue)
2011
New Black Dada Paintings
Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon
the women
Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago
Radio (One)
Salina Art Center, Kansas (catalogue)
2010
BAND
The Kitchen, New York
Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary
EL T D K Los Angeles
Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles
chandelier across cognition generates glow linguistic signals perception
Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon
2009
EL T D K Amsterdam. Part I: three scenes
Kunstverein, Amsterdam
EL T D K
Haunch of Venison, Berlin (catalogue)
2008
Rendered in Black
Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indiana
2007
Rendered in Black and Rendered
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
2006
Bam Split Lab and the Afro Futuristic Underground
Perry Rubenstein Gallery, Los Angeles
2005
History
Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles
Deeper Down There
Yvon Lambert, New York
Gorilla, My Love
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
2004
Being Here
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, University of Illinois, Urbana
Being Here
Wallspace Gallery, New York
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
In Defense of Symbolic Value: Artistic Procedures in the Resort, curated by Isabelle Graw
Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
Adam Pendleton: To Divide By
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis
Distant Voices
Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris
2022
Burning at the Edges
Longlati Foundation, Shanghai
On Certainty: Gifts from Collection of Suzanne F. Cohen
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Performing Documents: Modes of Assembling
Center for Book Arts, New York
This Tender, Fragile Thing
Jack Shainman Gallery, The School, Kinderhook, New York
Seoul Pop-Up Exhibition
David Kordansky Gallery, Seoul
2021
Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman
Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (catalogue)
Subliminal Horizons
Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown & New York
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America
New Museum, New York (catalogue)
APMA, CHAPTER THREE – from the APMA Collection
Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul
2020
Artists for New York
Hauser & Wirth, New York
Drawing 2020
Gladstone Gallery, New York
To Be Determined
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich
Mapping the Collection
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Yesterday's Tomorrow: Selections from the Rose Collection, 1933–2018
Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham
2019
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv
Manifesto: Art X Agency
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington
Surface Tension
Carolina Nitsch Project Room, New York
2018
LeWitt, Nevelson, Pendleton Part II
Pace Gallery, Geneva
Acquisition Selection 2018
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
DPAM Collects: Happy Little Trees and Other Recent Acquisitions
DePaul Art Museum, Chicago
LeWitt, Nevelson, Pendleton
Pace Gallery, Geneva
Second Sight: The Paradox of Vision in Contemporary Art
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick
2017
Public Movement: On Art, Politics, and Dance
Moderna Museet, Malmö
Sonic Rebellion: Music as Resistance
Museum of Contemporray Art, Detroit
I am you, you are too
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
How to live together
Kunsthalle wien, Vienna
The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin
The Jewish Museum, New York
American African American
Phillips, London
OCCUPY MANA: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy (Year 1)
Mana Contemporary, Jersey City
2016
The Eighth Climate (What does Art do?)
11th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju
The revolution will not be grey
Aspen Art Musuem, Colorado
The language of things
Public art fund, City Hall Park, New York
Blackness in Abstraction
Pace Galley, New York
New Visions
Tensta Konsthall, Spanga
Lorraine O´Grady: Initial Recognition
Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville
2015
Personne et les autres
Belgian Pavilion, 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale de Venezia, Venice
Sharon Hayes, Tony Lewis, Adam Pendleton
Andrea Rosen Gallery 2, New York
Adventures of the black square: Abstract Art and Society 1915–2015
Whitechapel Gallery, London
Young, Gifted and Black
Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
The 2015 Biennial of the Americas: Now? Now!
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver
2014
Civil Rights
Void, Derry
Selected Works
Travesia Cuarto, Guadalajara
We Love Video This Summer
Pace, Beijng
Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Love Story – The Anne & Wolfgang Titze Collection
Winter Palace and 21er Haus, Belvedere, Vienna
The Disappearance of the Fireflies
Collection Lambert, Avignon
Joan Jonas & Adam Pendleton
Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon
2013
The 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts: Interruption
International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana
Warhol Ones
Half Gallery, New York
After Hours 2: Murals on the Bowery
Art Production Fund, in partnership with The New Museum, Bowery
2012
Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art
Contemporary Art Museum, Houston;
Grey Art Gallery at New York University, New York (2013);
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2013);
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2014)
Books: Adam Pendleton, Matt Keegan and Ricardo Valentim
Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon
Alphabets/Heaps of Language
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Phantom Limb: Approaches to Painting Today
Museum of Contemporary art, Chicago
La Triennale: Intense Proximity
Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Heart to Hand
Swiss Institute/Contemporary Art, New York
2011
A Promise Is A Cloud
MetroTech Center, New York
Never Odd or Even
Grimmuseum, Berlin
Fifth Contour Biennial, Mechelen
Soft Machines
The Pace Gallery, New York
2010
Quadruple-Consciousness
Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia
It Is Written
Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz
Greater New York 2010
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York
Collected: Reflections on the Permanent Collection
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Self as Disappearance
Centre d’Art Contemporain, La Synagogue de Delme, Delme
Desire
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin
From Then to Now: Masterworks of Contemporary African American Art
Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland
Afro-Modernism: Journeys through the Black Atlantic
Tate Liverpool, Liverpool
Blood of a Poet
Thierry Goldberg Projects, New York
2009
The One Hundred and Sixty-Third Floor
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
After 1968: Contemporary Artists and The Civil Rights Legacy
California African American Museum, Los Angeles
Performa 09: The Prompt
White Slab Palace, New York
Cargo/Cargo Manifest/Cargo Vision
Autocenter, Berlin
Infinitesimal Eternity
Yale University School of Art, New Haven
Black Hole
Kunsthalle Andratx, Mallorca
Constellations: Paintings from the MCA Collection
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Encodings: Artists in Residence, 2008–2009
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Talk Show
Institute of Contemporary Art, London
The Generational: Younger Than Jesus
New Museum, New York
2008
Matter of Fact: Aftermath
Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo
U-TURN: Perform History II, U-TURN Quadrennial for Contemporary Art
Aarhus Art Building, Aarhus
Manifesto Marathon
Serpentine Gallery, London
Macrocosm
Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles
Manifesta 7: Matter of Fact
Manifattura Tabacchi, Rovereto (catalogue)
Freeway Balconies
Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
The Future as Disruption
The Kitchen, New York
After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy
High Museum of Art, Atlanta (catalogue)
Object: The Undeniable Success of Operations
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Hey Hey Glossolalia: The Eroticism of Pedagogy
Creative Time, Judson Memorial Church, New York (catalogue)
2007
Performa 07: The Second Biennial of New Visual Art Performance
Stephen Weiss Studio, New York
Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago;
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2008);
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2008) (catalogue)
Resistance Is…
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Commemorating Thirty Years, Part III, 1991–2007
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
2006
Intersteller Low Ways
Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago
R³: Reading ‘Ritin ‘Rithmetic, 30 Years Later
Castle Gallery, Inverness
Sea Change
Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles
Please Love Me
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, Milwaukee
Figures de l’acteur: Le paradoxe du comédien
Collection Lambert, Avignon
Message Personnel
Yvon Lambert, Paris
2005
Frequency
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (catalogue)
25 Bold Moves
House of Campari, New York
Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art since 1970
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (catalogue)
2004
When Contemporary Art Speaks
Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indiana
Seven More (Things We Like)
Conner Contemporary Art, Washington D.C.
Black Milk: Theories on Suicide
Marvelli Gallery, New York
Optimo: Manifestations of Optimism in Contemporary Art
Ballroom Marfa, Texas
It’s About Memory
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London / Holzwarth Publications, Berlin 2023 (Eds.): Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman, 2023
Galerie Max Hetzler (Ed.): Adam Pendleton: Who We Are, Berlin, 2019
Pace Gallery (Ed.): Adam Pendleton: Our Ideas, London, 2018
König Books (Ed.):Adam Pendleton: Black Dada Reader, London, 2017
Contemporary Arts Center (Ed.): Adam Pendleton: Becoming Imperceptible, New Orleans, 2016
Pace Gallery (Ed.): Adam Pendleton: I’ll Be Your, London, 2012
Salina Art Center (Ed.): RADIO, Salina, 2011
Haunch of Venison (Ed.): Adam Pendleton: EL T D K, Berlin, 2009
Kunstverein Publishing (Ed.): Grey-Blue Grain, Amsterdam, 2009
Galerie Yvon Lambert (Ed.): Adam Pendleton: So I Independent in Georgia in the 90's, Paris / New York, 2006
Videos
Publications
In Defence of Symbolic Value: Artistic Procedures in the Resort
Exhibition Poster
2023
€ 10.00
Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman
Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London / Holzwarth Publications, Berlin 2023
With a conversation between Amy Sillman, Adam Pendleton, and Isabelle Graw
€ 30.00
Adam Pendleton: Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman
Exhibition Poster
2021
€ 20.00
Adam Pendleton: Who We Are
Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London, Berlin 2019
With texts by Omar Berrada
€ 50.00
Adam Pendleton, Who We Are
Exhibition Poster
2019
€ 20.00
Adam Pendleton, Who We Are
Exhibition Poster
2019
€ 20.00
Selected Press
Architectural Digest November 2022
T Magazine September 2022
Montreal Gazette March 2022
frieze October 2021
The New York Times September 2021
Interview Magazine Summer 2021
ARTnews June 2020
Der Tagesspiegel June 2019
The New York Times May 2018
WSJ Magazine March 2018
The Brooklyn Rail September 2016
Art in America January 2015
The New York Observer April 2012
Artforum November 2011
BOMB Magazine November 2010
The New York Times May 2010
