Derrick Adams, is a multidisciplinary New Yorkbased artist. His practice is rooted in Deconstructivist philosophies and the formation and perception of ideals attached to objects, colors, textures, symbols and ideologies. His work focuses on the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface while exploring the shape-shifting force of popular culture in our lives. He received his MFA from Columbia University, a BFA from Pratt Institute and is a Skowhegan and Marie Walsh Sharpe alumnus. Exhibition and performance highlights include MoMA PS1, Perfoma 05, Brooklyn Museum and The Kitchen NYC. He is a recipient of a 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and an honored finalist for the 2011 William H. Johnson Prize. He is currently in the centennial The Bearden Project at the Studio Museum in Harlem and solo Deconstruction Worker at Jack Tilton Gallery. Upcoming exhibitions include the Boston Center for the Arts this summer and a four-night performance in BAM's new Fisher Theater in September of 2012.
In addition to making art, Adams is the former Curatorial Director of Rush Arts Gallery in New York which in 2008 received the Mayor's Award for Art and Culture. He's participated in panels, lectures and taught at Columbia University, NYU, University of Tennessee and Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2009, Adams launched the creative online destination, Bingeonline.com.
photo credit: Michael Chuapoco
Adams' work combines a variety of media to fashion a small society within an animated world by scripting performative identities through costumes and environments that are frequently reversed (interior/exterior, front/back), manifesting the two-sided nature of seemingly neutral objects. A preoccupation with consumer objects and their presumed demographic posturing, particularly in an urban context, informs his practice of reconfiguring familiar items to expose their persuasive and often duplicitous nature. Learning functions as both subject and object in his work, which derive from impressionable experiences associated with iconography from American culture, gleaned from adults, education, television, and mostly from the black male experience.
His recent work speaks of fallen empires and childhood impressions; of glittery memories against muted realities. Broken landscapes address the relationship between man and monument - coexisting in the landscape as representations of each other - one mortal, impermanent and actual size, the other exaggerated, serving as a semi-permanent structure to commemorate our presence.
PLEASE CONTACT TO REQUEST A VIEWING COPY
