Derrick Adams

b. 1970

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, 1970; Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

I feel more than ever that it is essential for artists to make work that celebrates Black culture. As a Black man, I am aware of my vulnerability and susceptibility to trauma and oppression on a daily basis...there are images that are less important for us to see than images of joy. — Derrick Adams

Artwork

Exhibitions

10.02.2021–05.01.2022
Packaged Black
Henry Art Museum

Derrick Adams

03.20–04.24.2021
Style Variations
Salon 94 89th Street

Derrick Adams

03.03–10.18.2020
Buoyant | We Came To Party And Plan
Hudson River Museum

Derrick Adams

02.13–02.16.2020
Group Show
Frieze Los Angeles

Frieze LA 2020

12.03–12.08.2019
Group Show
Art Basel

Art Basel Miami Beach 2019

Biography

Portrait of Derrick Adams by Christopher Garcia Valle

Derrick Adams is a New York-based artist whose critically admired work spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and sound installations. His multidisciplinary practice engages the ways in which individuals’ ideals, aspirations, and personae become attached to specific objects, colors, textures, symbols, and ideologies. His work probes the influence of popular culture on the formation of self-image, and the relationship between man and monument as they coexist and embody one another. Adams is also deeply immersed in questions of how Black experiences intersect with art history, American iconography, and consumerism. Most notably in his Floater series, he portrays Black people at leisure, positing that respite itself is a political act when embraced by Black communities. The radicality of this position has materialized in Adams’ work across his Deconstruction Worker, Figure in the Urban Landscape, and Beauty World series.

In formal terms, 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 not only images and materials, but also different types of sensory experiences, link the artist to an estimable lineage of pioneers ranging from Hannah Höch and Henri Matisse, to William H. Johnson and Romare Bearden. In Adams’ art, the process can also be understood as an analog: “Everything that we are is based on a specific construction,” he once remarked.

Derrick Adams (b. 1970, Baltimore, MD) received his MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Pratt Institute. He is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program and was the recipient of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship, a Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. 

Adams has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions such as The Momentary, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2021); SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film, Savannah (2020–2021); Hudson River Museum, Yonkers (2020); Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg (2020); The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall (2019); and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2018). The artist has mounted public installations commissioned through MTA Arts & Design at the Nostrand Avenue LIRR Station, Brooklyn (2020–ongoing); and RxART at NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem (2019–ongoing). His work has been featured in notable group exhibitions, including Textures: The History and Art of Black Hair, Kent State University Museum (2021–2022); Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (2020), now at the Seattle Art Museum (2021); Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth., National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati (2019), traveled to Washington State History Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Tacoma (2019–2020); and Performa, New York (2015, 2013, 2005). His art resides in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and the Birmingham Museum of Art, among many others. He has recently established an artist program and residency in his hometown of Baltimore called The Last Resort.

CV

Press

03.13.2022
Artist Derrick Adams celebrates Black wig styles in impressive paintings at Cleveland Museum of Art
Steven Litt

Cleveland

12.10.2021
Derrick Adams Create Scenes of Black Joy Through Formalism
Maximilíano Durón

Artnews

07.08.2021
With His Radical Depictions Of Black Joy, Derrick Adams Is An Artist To Watch
Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle

Forbes

04.01.2021
Derrick Adams’s Art Celebrates Black Life at its Most Exultant
Dodie Kazanjian

Vogue

03.23.2021
Derrick Adams Finds Strength in "Style Variations"
Evan Pricco

Juxtapoz

10.05.2020
Star Artist Derrick Adams Explains the Radical Power of Making Work About Black People ‘Just Being, Living’
Charles Moore

artnet

02.03.2020
Party Politics
Michael Wilson

GRAY magazine

02.01.2020
Jay-Z Takes On the Super Bowl
Katherine Rosman

New York Times

08.14.2020
Derrick Adams’ Radical Depictions Of Black Leisure On View At Hudson River Museum
Chadd Scott

Forbes

08.28.2019
Derrick Adams: Be Who You Want To Be
Jewels Dodson

Juxtapoz

01.19.2018
How an Artist Learned About Freedom From ‘The Negro Motorist Green Book’
Meredith Mendelsohn

New York Times

01.05.2018
Transforming the View: Derrick Adams Interviewed by Monica Uszerowicz
Monica Uszerowicz

BOMB Magazine

10.24.2017
Derrick Adams Explores The Pleasure Principle
Cultured

Cultured

07.05.2016
A Brooklyn Artist Finds Inspiration Close to Home
Kristiano Ang

Wall Street Journal