Derrick Adams

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS | PERFORMANCES | PROJECTS

November 17, 2012 – March 3, 2013

RADICAL PRESENCE: BLACK PERFORMANCE IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Opening Reception: Friday, November 16, 2012 | 7-9PM
BROWN FOUNDATION GALLERY
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
www.camh.org

Organized by Senior Curator Valerie Cassel Oliver

Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art chronicles the persistence of black performance in the field of visual arts. While black performance has been largely contextualized as an extension of theater, black visual artists have integrated performance into their work for over five decades, generating a repository of performance work that has gone largely unrecognized until now. Radical Presence provides a critical framework to discuss the history of black performance traditions within the visual arts beginning with the “happenings” of the early 1960s, throughout the 1980s, and into the contemporary practices of a new generation of artists.

November 10 – December 22, 2012
BIGGER THAN SHADOWS
Reception: Saturday, November 3, 6-8pm
DODGE gallery
15 Rivington Street
New York, NY 10002
INFO@DODGE-GALLERY.com

Curated by Rich Blint and Ian Cofre

Bigger Than Shadows is a group exhibition that explores recent work on the black male body that refashions, riffs on, or re-inflects dominant constructions about the figure known as the black male. Black maleness conjures a host of contradictory associations in the American imagination—from questions about historical morality, creative virtuosity, inherent pathology, to notions of outsized masculinity and, paradoxically, the very absence of masculine authority. Bigger Than Shadows aims to clear space for a timely exchange among emerging and established artists about contemporary and future-oriented visual re-presentations of racialized corporeality—of the black male body in the flesh.

November 5-10, 2012

CAMERON VISITING ARTIST: DERRICK ADAMS

Mahaney Center for the Arts
Middlebury College
South Main St./Route 30 South
72 Porter Field Rd.
Middlebury, VT 05753

Derrick Adams comes to Middlebury the second week of November as the fifth Cameron Visiting Artist to take part in the Master Print Project to create a limited edition print. Not only will students hear about Derrick’s work during his artist talk, but they will also learn the ins and outs of how to create a professional print portfolio.

October 5 – November 15, 2012

HILLMAN U.
A DREAM DEFERRED, A DREAM FULFILLED
The Proposition
2 Extra Place (@ East 1st Street off Bowery)
New York, NY 10003
www.theproposition.com

A Pop Up by DERRICK ADAMS
in collaboration with Industrial Designer MICHAEL CHUAPOCO
[A collection of deconstructed wearable pieces in a responsive display environment.]

In his latest sculptural project Derrick Adams seeks to combine the historical references of Marcus Garvey and the Black Star Line as a fashion concept with a constructed aesthetic and visual point of view of an academic and collegiate persona. This romantic revision of Garveyism is adapted and re-imagined as a mainstream urban fashion movement.

Garveyism reemerged in mainstream urban fashion in the 90′s with the introduction of black fashion companies like FUBU (For Us By Us), Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule, and Cross Colours. These fashion labels made their impact in media culture alongside television programs such as Fresh Prince of Bel Air, The Cosby Show and its spinoff A Different World.

A Different World was an NBC sitcom set in a fictitious HBCU (Historical Black College or University) called HILLMAN, and portrayed the black college life and eclectic styles of its students. There is a dual meaning in the program’s title and theme song, It’s a Different World (Where I Come From), it refers not only to a young adult being away from home but also to notions of an alternate state of being in a place that is culturally unfamiliar.

This time was instrumental in cultivating a new self image through the standard American model of commercial marketing strategy.

The subtitle A Dream Deferred, A Dream Fulfilled is inspired by a poem by Langston Hughes and a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. Both are driving forces behind the concept for the exhibition.

September 27- November 10, 2012

ARCHITECTURAL ARCHETYPES
General Audience Presents
769 NE 125th Street
North Miami, FL 33161
www.generalaudiencepresents.com

General Audience Presents is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition and the first solo show in Miami of artist Derrick Adams titled “Architectural Archetypes.”

ARCHITECTURAL ARCHETYPES, a solo exhibition of new works on paper, references structures seen in the cityscape and the presence of humanity within as prototypes made and used as a general model for representation. As a continuation of Adams’ current Deconstruction Worker series (recently exhibited at Jack Tilton Gallery in New York earlier this year) this body of mixed media sculpture and works on paper uses ink, pencil, paint, crayon, printed shelf-liner and other faux surfaces to create minimal geometric constructions of angular human figures that seemingly live both in a state of deconstruction at the same time as if in the process of being built.

September 19 – 22, 2012

THE CHANNEL- WORLD PREMIER

Original Music Score by Ramon Silva

BAM Fishman Space

BAM Richard B. Fisher Building, 321 Ashland Pl)
Brooklyn, NY
www.bam.org

The Channel is a lively, seriocomic performance that explores a construct of American popular culture, commerce, and the development of self-image via a lesson in color and new media. Presented in a format similar to the early learning educational television programs of the 1970s such as Electric Company and Sesame Street, the Channel character, played by Derrick Adams, is a pseudo-mystical shaman serving as host and intermediary who controls this world of commercial abundance. Live action segments will include a fragmented sermon/sales pitch from a portable multimedia sculpture installation, incorporating projection, sound and music by Ramon Silva, and colorful costumes. The show closes with a finale DJ set/benediction allowing contemplation and discourse on overall themes. There will also be a contribution from Aisha Cousins’ Diva Dutch.

July 13 – September 23, 2012
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DERRICK: PERFORMATIVE OBJECTS IN FORMATION
Mills Gallery
Boston Center for the Arts (BCA)
539 Tremont Street | Boston, MA 02116
www.bcaonline.org

Curator: Nuit Banai

In his first exhibition in Boston, The World According To Derrick: Performative Objects in Formation, the New York based multidisciplinary artist will display sculptural objects, photographs, and video documentation from performances along with performative-related sculptural works. This collection of diverse works, representing over a decade of artistic production, possesses the traces of human embodiment and its transformative nature.

For Adams, the experiential dimension is all important as his works and their spectators share a performative facet. Surpassing the limits of medium specificity, Adams’ practice generates network of subtle references, allusions, and hints that tap into numerous registers of experience. Not only do his artworks emerge from multiple contexts, but they also maintain the possibility of evoking hybrid environments, sensations, and narratives. To invest literal meaning is to miss the point, however, as Adams playfully engages with contemporary culture to invent his own worlds and horizons of meanings.

July 12 – August 24, 2012
TETE-A-TETE
Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West Twenty-Second Street
New York, NY 10011
www.yanceyrichardson.com

Curator: Mickalene Thomas

First presented at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago the exhibition extends from an artist’s talk in January of 2012 the Friends of Education of the Museum of Modern Art, New York invited Derrick Adams, Clifford Owens, Mickalene Thomas, and Xaviera Simmons to participate in “Conversation: Among Friends.” This discussion inspired Thomas to question ideas surrounding collaborative work, and to consider the performative process in which a conversation is transformed into a visual expression.

July 10, 2012 (release)
GO STAND NEXT TO THE MOUNTAIN REMIX PROJECT
www.gostandnexttothemountainremixproject.com

GO STAND NEXT TO THE MOUNTAIN REMIX PROJECT is a limited edition vinyl collectable album featuring remixed versions of songs from multidisciplinary artist Derrick Adams’ collaborative endeavor with composer Philippe Treuille. The original songs for this new project were first presented during Adams’ live performance of Go Stand Next To The Mountain at The Kitchen NYC in 2010. That performance included an original score by Treuille and an additional musical contribution by ART FOR MONEY recording artists CrashPlanet, MoPeshi and Ramon Rendezvous – all of whom appear in this new remix album. The experimental sound and context of the original performance is expanded into an alternative musical experience and conceptual work with a responsive album cover design, packaging and production by Rhodeworks, Berlin.

June 28 – August 10, 2012
SUMMER GROUP SHOW: FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
Lehmann Maupin
201 Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002
www.lehmannmaupin.com

Curators: Carla Camacho and Drew Moody

Lehmann Maupin Gallery is pleased to present Friends with Benefits, a group exhibition on view 28 June – 10 August at 201 Chrystie Street. Extending the gallery space to local emerging talent for our summer show, we turned to Tony Oursler, Angel Otero, Tim Rollins, Mickalene Thomas, and Nari Ward to reach out to New York artists whose work they wish to encourage. The show manifests the gallery community as a fertile space for the exchange of ideas and an opportunity for fresh prespectives, while supporting the richness of New York’s interconnected art world.

June 8-July 28, 2012
PRATT ALUMNI PAINTERS
Pratt Manhattan Gallery
144 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.pratt.edu/about_pratt/exhibitions/

Curator: Director of Exhibitions, Nick Battis

The work of Pratt Alumni has been displayed at many prominent museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, as well as at museums and galleries internationally. This installment of the alumni exhibition series focuses on a small group of painters who graduated within the last three decades.

May 17, 2012
ALJIRA ART AUCTION BENEFIT
591 Broad Street
Newark, NJ 07102

The Aljira Fine Art Auction 2012 will honor Derrick Adams, John Ahearn and Chitra Ganesh with the Timehri Award for Leadership in the Arts.

Aljira’s annual, festive fine art auction features original works of art by leading established and emerging artists of our time and attracts a diverse audience from throughout New Jersey and New York.

May 15- June 25, 2012
SONANDO EN COLOR | HAVANA BIENNIAL
Reception Tuesday, May 15th 5pm-7pm
Centro Experimental De Los Artes Visuales
The Corner of Calle C and 23rd st in Vedado

Organized by: Musa Hixson

Soñando en Color is an artistic research and cultural exchange project that has initiated in New York City and will conclude in Havana, Cuba as part of Havana Biennial.

Soñando en Color or (Dreaming in Color) is an examination of the response that African-American Artists have to the socio-cultural climate and history of Cuba.The components of this initiative include an art exhibition and artist’s panel discussion both on the stated topic. There will also be a children’s workshop and donation to the Centro Experimental De Los Artes Visuales youth arts program, In Havana Cuba.

With the advent of advances and accessibility of internet technology, media, photography and video equipment and social networking, individuals from various sectors of the African Diaspora have gained an unprecedented opportunity to interact and communicate. This accessibility has also created an environment of cross-cultural learning, production that moves beyond traditional barriers as they relate to communication, social action and the production and responses of artists. There now exists a new space where ideas are presented and validated on a broader platform and are digestible for global audiences. This project seeks to investigate reactions made by African Americans to the cultural landscape of Cuba and how these responses can influence future trends in global society.

May 4, 2012
FRIEZE UPTOWN FRIDAY
featuring Derrick Adams and Edgar Arceneaux
The Studio Museum in Harlem | Theatre, Galleries 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
144 West 125th Street
New York, New York 10027

Organized by: Thomas Lax

Join The Studio Museum in Harlem in celebrating the Frieze Art Fair with a special evening including a cocktail reception; opportunities to view the current exhibitions Shift: Projects | Persepctives | Directions, Ralph Lemon: 1856 Cessna Road, Kira Lynn Harris: The Block | Bellona ,Who, What, Wear: Selections from the Permanent Collection, and Harlem Postcards; a site-specific performance of Derrick Adams’ ongoing solo project Communicating with Shadows and a book signing with Edgar Arceneaux.

March 29, 2012- May 5, 2012
TETE-A-TETE
Rhona Hoffman Gallery
118 North Peoria Street
Chicago, Illinois 60607
www.rhoffmangallery.com

curator: Mickalene Thomas

Rhona Hoffman Gallery is pleased to present tête-à-tête, a group exhibition of photographic work by Derrick Adams, Jayson Keeling, Deana Lawson, Zanele Muholi, Clifford Owens, Mahlot Sansosa, Malick Sidibe, Xaviera Simmons, Mickalene Thomas, and Hank Willis Thomas.

In January of 2012 the Friends of Education of the Museum of Modern Art, New York invited Derrick Adams, Clifford Owens, Mickalene Thomas, and Xaviera Simmons to participate in “Conversation: Among Friends.” This discussion inspired Thomas to question ideas surrounding collaborative work, and to consider the performative process in which a conversation is transformed into a visual expression.

March 12- March 31, 2012
MAN AS HIS ELEMENT
Francis Colburn Gallery
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont

Is a continuation of Adams Deconstruction Worker series ———————- In this current body of works on paper: clothing patterns, ink, pencil, paint, crayon, printed shelf liner and other faux surfaces are used to create minimal geometric constructions of structures, landscapes and angular human forms to explore ideas related to man and the surroundings that can define him.

February 4 – March 10, 2012

NEXT GENERATION

Contemporary Wing
Washington, D.C.

The Next Generation, is the result is a fabulous group of artists working in a broad range of media, including photography, painting, sculpture, installation, textiles, drawing, light and new media, as well as works that combine or hover between these media.