Adam Pendleton (born 1984) is an American conceptual artist known for his multi-disciplinary practice, involving painting, silkscreen, collage, video, performance,[1][2] and word art.
[7] In an interview with Bomb magazine, Thom Donovan describes Adam Pendleton as "a rare artist in his ability to synthesize disciplines and mediums, and to steer with collaborators toward 'total works,' which yet remain drafts of a larger essayistic practice.
...With Pendleton's work, even though we are often left with aporias and blind spots, we feel the force of historical matter self-organizing and finding form beyond representability and essence.
"[10] Pendleton often juxtaposes imagery, language, music and concepts from a variety of subjects such as philosophy and important historical movements, creating complex work that allows for multiple interpretations.
[7] The show featured two-color canvases with silkscreened lines from modern African-American literature and music, as well as paintings resembling enlarged record album covers.
"[12] In his 2007 performance piece, The Revival, the artist, dressed in a white tuxedo jacket, black pants and bright green shoes, gave a sermon while accompanied by a 30-person gospel choir.
[8] In BAND, footage of Deerhoof rehearsing is edited to include fragments from a 1971 documentary, Teddy, about a young member of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles.
His installation, The Abolition of Alienated Labor, included drawings and images appropriated from the 1950s African independence movement and from a 1960s Godard film, silk-screened onto large mirrors.
[7][8] The images include photographs of the Fridericianum during the 1955 Documenta[15] and of a couple dancing in the street during a celebration of independence in Congo, as well as stills of Anna Karina from Jean-Luc Godard's film Made in U.S.A.[7] Pendleton has said, "I am working to establish a system of display, of organization.
[18] In 2017, Pendleton published the Black Dada Reader, a sourcebook containing photocopied texts by Haryette Mullen, Gertrude Stein, Sun Ra, Hugo Ball, Stokely Carmichael, Ad Reinhardt, Joan Retallack, Ron Silliman, Adrian Piper, and many others, as well as newly commissioned essays from several writers and curators.
[19] In 2020, Pendleton created a unique and provocative cover for The New York Times Magazine's July 4 edition which featured a Frederick Douglass speech with imagery overlaid, suggesting a disconnect with America's promise of freedom versus its continued post-slavery caste system.