Untitled

ADAM PENDLETON (B. 1984)  

Untitled  

silkscreen ink on mylar in artist's frames, in 6 parts  

sheet (each, approx.): 38 x 29 inches (96.5 x 73.7 cm)  

framed (each, approx.): 40 x 31 inches (101.6 x 78.7 cm)  

Executed in 2017.

PROVENANCE:  

The artist  

Lever House Artwork Collection, New York

EXHIBITED:  

New York, Lever House Lobby, what a day this was, March-August, 2018.

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984, Richmond, Virginia) is one of the most influential artists of his generation, renowned for a multidisciplinary practice that examines the intersections of abstraction, language, history, and Blackness. Since 2008, his ongoing conceptual framework, Black Dada, has served as a means of reconsidering the legacies of the historical avant-garde through the lens of contemporary Black experience, drawing on literature, philosophy, political history, and visual culture. Across painting, drawing, photography, film, and publishing, Pendleton constructs layered compositions in which fragments of text, geometric forms, and appropriated imagery are repeatedly sampled, obscured, and reconfigured. Central to this practice are his OK DADA OK BLACK DADA OK and System of Display series, in which silkscreened photographs, gestural marks, and archival references dissolve conventional distinctions between image and language, creating works that are formally rigorous and conceptually expansive.

Executed in 2017, Untitled comprises six unique silkscreen compositions on transparent Mylar, each layering geometric forms, handwritten and typed text, and photographic imagery of African masks in shifting, overlapping configurations. Drawing from Pendleton's extensive studio archive—including materials related to the Civil Rights Movement, American Minimalism, Dada, African visual culture, and his own drawings—the work embodies the fragmentary, associative logic that defines Black Dada, inviting viewers to navigate meaning through accumulation rather than resolution. The present work was exhibited in what a day this was at Lever House, New York, in 2018, a site-specific installation that transformed the landmark modernist lobby into an immersive environment of transparency, reflection, and layered visual language. Bringing together works from the OK DADA OK BLACK DADA OK and System of Display series alongside monumental wall works and additional Mylar compositions, the exhibition established a dynamic dialogue with the building's glass architecture while exploring the ways images, texts, and histories can be continuously reassembled to propose new understandings of modernism, memory, and identity.

Adam Pendleton has been the subject of solo exhibitions across the United States and abroad, at institutions including the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (2008); Kunstverein, Amsterdam (2009); The Kitchen, New York (2010); Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017); Baltimore Museum of Art (2017); and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2018). His 2016 exhibition Becoming Imperceptible was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, before closing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2014); the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015); The Revolution Will Not Be Grey, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2016); and the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016); Public Movement: On Art, Politics and Dance, Moderna Museet Malmo, Sweden (2017); and How To Live Together, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2017).