
Derrick Adams, Figure in the Urban Landscape 29, 2019.
Acrylic, graphite, ink, fabric on paper, grip tape, model cars on wood panel.
Derrick Adams, Figure in the Urban Landscape 31, 2019.
Acrylic, graphite, ink, fabric on paper, grip tape, model cars on wood panel.
Derrick Adams, Figure in the Urban Landscape 35, 2019.
Acrylic, graphite, ink, fabric on paper, grip tape, model cars on wood panel.
Rebel Rebel, 2017. Mixed media collage on paper, 60.5 x 40.5 inches, paper, 66 x 46 inches, framed.
Still Life, 2013. Mixed media collage on paper, 50 x 50 inches, paper, 55 x 55 inches, framed.
Fabrication Station #5, 2016. Fabric, metal hanging hardware, 72 x 108 inches.
Floater No. 58 (two rafts), 2017. Acrylic paint, pencil and fabric on paper, 50 x 100 inches.
Crossroads, 2012. Digital photograph, 44 x 36 inches, Edition of 3.
Upward Mobility, 2014. Mixed media collage on paper, 72 x 50 inches, paper, 77 x 55 inches, framed. Private Collection.
Photo: Mark Poucher
Brooklyn-based artist Derrick Adams creates layered portraits that deconstruct African American subjectivity as it ebbs and flows with the built environment of American cities. Adams merges his subjects’ interior and exterior worlds, engaging the physical and ideological structures that inform their identities. This negotiation occurs in an expanded temporality that elides historical and contemporary symbols of Black empowerment, and uses elements of material culture to project a future of expanded mobility, autonomy and freedom. Through both large-scale installations and more intimate paintings and collages, Adams exposes selfhood and persona as constantly shifting phenomena whose oscillations mimic the way cities change and develop.
Adams’ practice is rooted in Deconstructivist philosophies related to the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, and the marriage of complex and improbable forms. His tendency to layer, hybridize, and collage images, materials, and sensory experiences, links him to Modernist pioneers ranging from Hannah Höch and Henri Matisse, to Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson and Romare Bearden.
Adams received his MFA from Columbia University in New York and his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation’s Studio Program. Adams is the recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2019), a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2018), a Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2016), and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2009). Adams has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Where I’m From—Derrick Adams (2019) at The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall; The Ins and Outs: Figures in the Urban Landscape (2019) at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago; Interior Life (2019) at Luxembourg & Dayan in New York; Derrick Adams: Sanctuary (2018) at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and Derrick Adams: Transmission (2018) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. His work resides in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.
Forbes contributor Chadd Scott speaks to Derrick Adams and Hudson River Museum Director Masha Turchinsky about pervasive images of blackness within Western art and the importance of representing black leisure.
Artnet news reviewed Derrick Adams: Buoyant on view at the Hudson River Museum. Buoyant is the first museum exhibition of Adams’ Floaters series and debuts We Came to Party and Plan (extended through October 18), new related works the artist created during his summer 2019 Rauschenberg Residency. Adams' Floaters depict a world where joy, love, leisure, and even prosaic normalcy play central roles, methodically filling the many voids and omissions in popular visual culture depicting African Americans.
Derrick Adams collaborates with the late fashion designer, Patrick Kelly, by juxtaposing materials from Kelly's archive with his own abstract collages and sculptures. In this exhibition Adams seeks to “talk about fashion, talk about the form, talk about the body without using the figure.”
A review of Derrick Adams: Buoyant at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York. Though the museum is temporarily closed due to COVID-19 viewers can engage virtually with Adams' exhibition on the museum's website.
Adams discusses Where I'm From, his first solo show in his native Baltimore, and his plans to create a "bed and breakfast" artist residency in Baltimore's Waverly neighborhood.
Review of Where I'm From, at the Gallery in Baltimore City Hall.
Review of New Icons at Mary Boone Gallery.
Review of Derrick Adams: Interior Life at Luxembourg & Dayan, New York.
Review of Derrick Adams: Interior Life at Luxembourg & Dayan, New York.
Review of America's Playground at Miami Beach's Faena Hotel.
Derrick Adams unveils a seven-story mural at the Fashion Outlets of Chicago in Rosemont that is inspired by the late fashion designer Patrick Kelly.
Review of Live and in Color at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.