ART CITIES:London-Adam Pendleton

Adam Pendleton’s is a conceptual artist known for his multi-disciplinary practice in an array of different media, from collage to painting to video and performance. What draws all these threads together is a concern with language and historical narrative viewed through the lens of African-American culture and aesthetics, plus his own guiding theory, dubbed “Black Dada”.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

Adam Pendleton’s solo exhibition “Our Ideas”, presenting a full spectrum of mediums, the exhibition features four “Untitled (A Victim of American Democracy)” paintings, one “Black Dada” painting and drawing, a video work, two grids of works on Mylar (in 36 and 32 parts each), a group of collages, and one “Wall Work” with several small “System of Display” works. The artist’s largest project to date is inspired by a poem by the American writer LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) titled “Black Dada Nihilismus” (1964). Through the use of provocative language and the merging of high and low cultural references, Baraka critiques linear representations of African-Americans by creating a space for new artistic, personal, and social possibilities. Begun in 2008, this ongoing project has taken several forms, varying from large, abstract textual silkscreen paintings to Pendleton’s publication “Black Dada Reader”. In “The Untitled (A Victim of American Democracy)” (2018) h spray-painted vertical lines are layered with enlarged, cut-up language. The phrase “A VICTIM OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY,” which was pulled from Malcolm X’s 1964 speech “The Ballot or the Bullet”, has been spray painted, photographed, laser printed, collaged, and finally screen-printed across the striated ground. Pendleton’s “Just Back from Los Angeles: A Portrait of Yvonne Rainer”, is his third work in a series of portraits. Over a meal the dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, and writer Yvonne Rainer meet Adam Pendleton. The two artists get to know one another for the very first time. Over the course of their meal, the video records their unscripted conversation punctuated by poignant moments. Rainer leads Pendleton in partnered movement exercises. Pendleton invites Rainer to read from a script which combines writing from her published works with accounts and discussions of inequality, racism, and anti-black violence by such voices as Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. For “System of Display” (2018), Pendleton again photocopies and crops images from his extensive library, in this case silkscreening them onto small mirrors. Each mirror is placed in a shadow box and overlaid with a plexiglass facade, upon which is printed a piece of a word, typically a single letter, indexed in each work’s title. Here, they are hung across a massive “Wall Work, Midnight (A Victim of American Democracy)” (2017), a black-and-white montage that echoes the four Untitled (A Victim of American Democracy) paintings. The titular “Our Ideas #2” and “Our ideas #3” (both 2018) are two large groups of framed Mylar transparencies. These works are based on collages that incorporate visual material from various found sources, as well as from the artist’s own drawings. Isolated images and fragments photocopied from the pages of books are layered with marks, shapes, and handwriting that frequently verges on the abstract. Recurring elements include masks, ceramics, certain phrases from the artist’s own writing and from literary sources (“WHAT A DAY WAS THIS”; “IF THE FUNCTION”), and historical images related to decolonization.

Info: Pace Gallery, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, Duration: 2/10-9/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com