Adam Pendleton

Slideshow Back to Artists

In 2004, Pendleton received his first one-artist exhibition, Being Here, at Wallspace Gallery, New York, which coincided with his first major group show, When Contemporary Art Speaks, at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indiana. In 2005, Pendleton had his first solo exhibition at Yvon Lambert, New York, presenting text-based screen print paintings that appropriated the writings of Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, among other poets, overlapping the critical use of language, conceptual art, and activism.

Marking a shift in his work toward the deconstruction and reimagining of existing forms, Pendleton created the time-based work The Revival (2007). Commissioned for the 2007 Performa Biennial, The Revival featured Pendleton reciting a secular sermon in front of a large gospel choir, engaging in a call and response with the audience bearing witness. The following year, Pendleton was recognized with his first major one-person museum exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (2008), and participated in Manifesta 7, in Rovereto, Italy, where he conceived of his Black Dada manifesto (2008) and presented it as a performance. Pendleton proposes Black Dada as a way to talk about the future while addressing the past. “Black” functions as an open-ended signifier and Dada as a reference to the avant-garde art movement. His solo exhibition Becoming Imperceptible (2016), the largest of his work at that time, 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, Ohio.

Born 1984, Richmond, Virginia

Lives and works in Germantown, New York, and Brooklyn, New York

 

EDUCATION

2000–2002, Artspace Independent Study Program, Pietrasanta, Italy

 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022

Adam Pendleton: These Things We’ve Done Together, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

 

2021

Adam Pendleton: Paper, Pace Gallery, Palm Beach

Adam Pendleton: Who Is Queen?, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

David Adjaye / Adam Pendleton, Pace Gallery, Hong Kong

 

2020

Adam Pendleton: Begin Again, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

Adam Pendleton, Le Consortium, Dijon, France

Adam Pendleton: Elements of Me, Isabella Stewart Garden Museum, Boston (Catalogue)

 

2019

Adam Pendleton: These Elements of Me, Pace Gallery, Seoul

Adam Pendleton: Who We Are, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

 

2018

Adam Pendleton: Our Ideas, Pace Gallery, 6 Burlington Gardens, London

Adam Pendleton: New Works, Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon

Adam Pendleton: what a day was this, Lever House, New York

List Projects: Adam Pendleton, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

2017

Adam Pendleton: Which We Can, Pace Palo Alto, California

Front Room: Adam Pendleton, Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, March 26–August 13, 2017.

Adam Pendleton: Shot him in the face, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Traveled to: Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom

 

2016
Adam Pendleton: Midnight in America, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich

Adam Pendleton: Becoming Imperceptible, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans

Traveled to: Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, July 15–September 25, 2016; Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, January 27–May 14, 2017.

 

2014

Adam Pendleton: New Work, Pace London, 6 Burlington Gardens

Adam Pendleton: Selected Works, Travesía Cuatro, Guadalajara, Mexico

Adam Pendleton: Selected Works, Shane Campbell Gallery

 

SELECT PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Amore Pacific Museum of Art, Seoul
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
The Contemporary Austin Jones Center, Austin, Texas
Dallas Museum of Art, Texas
DePaul Art Museum, Chicago
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis
Missouri Lever House, New York
The Long Museum, Shanghai
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Tate, London
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
University of Chicago, Illinois

Adam Pendleton uses historical and aesthetic content from texts and visual culture to critically examine the resonance of ideas from varied cultural perspectives, including social resistance movements and Dada, Minimalism, and Conceptualism.