System of Display
2019
Silkscreen ink on plexiglass and mirror

Ok Dada Ok Black Dada Ok 2018
Silkscreen ink and spray paint on canvas
84 x 60”

Our Ideas #3 (set of 20)
2018
Silkscreen ink on mylar
40 3/8 x 31 3/8”

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984) was born in Richmond, Virginia, to a schoolteacher who loved books and a contractor who played jazz music in his spare time. Growing up, Pendleton worked his way through his mother’s library reading books by Audre Lord, Toni Morrison and Adrienne Rich. He developed an appreciation for language and theory that has directly informed his artwork. As a teenager, Pendleton spent hours studying art books and painting in his parents’ basement. He made pilgrimages to New York City galleries and museums alone and occasionally with his father.

When he turned 18, he moved to New York to become an artist. His father drove him and some of his paintings in the family’s van. He sent unsolicited slides of his work to galleries and one day walked into Gallery 128 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with a painting under his arm. The owner, Kazuco Miyamoto, who also assisted conceptual artist, Sol LeWitt, put the work in her summer group show. When LeWitt stopped by the gallery to meet with Miyamoto, he saw Pendleton’s work. Impressed, he traded one of his gouaches for the painting. The following year, Pendleton developed a theoretical framework called Black Dada, which continues to provide the foundation for his practice today.

Though he used color in his early work, Pendleton has now limited his palette to black and white—not to connote racial categories but rather because he began to find color distracting. Working slowly and in ongoing series, he usually completes no more than 12 paintings a year.