Mark Borghi

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984, Richmond, Virginia) is a conceptual artist known for his multi-disciplinary practice, which moves fluidly between painting, publishing, photographic collage, video and performance. His work centers on an engagement with language, in both the figurative and literal senses, and the re-contextualization of history through appropriated imagery to establish alternative interpretations of the present and, as the artist has explained, “a future dynamic where new historical narratives and meanings can exist. His practice includes silkscreen paintings, photographic collage, video, performance, and publishing, The artist is an energizing figure with a reputation on the rise. Much of his work is language-based, including the well-known silkscreen series “Black Dada” (2008-). Beyond the references to the color of these monochromatic works (featuring geometric forms and letters from the titular phrase) and the WWI-era Dada movement, the tile of this series, which Pendleton describes as “a hybrid of poster and something else,” references a 1964 work by the Beat poet Amiri Baraka, Black Dada Nihilismus. “Black Dada is a a way to preach about the future while talking about the past. It is our present moment,” he explains. Sol LeWitt became his first collector when he bought a work he saw of Pendleton’s in his first gallery show; one of the pieces in Pendleton’s series makes explicit reference to LeWitt’s iconic cube.