DENVER, CO.- MCA Denver is presenting Adam Pendleton: Becoming Imperceptible, the largest solo presentation of the artist’s work to date. Including film, wall paintings, ceramics, and silkscreens from the past eight years, the exhibition presents Pendleton’s work as a collision between aesthetic and historical concerns.
Drawing upon landmark literary texts as well as works from the history of modern art, Pendleton’s work references political and cultural movements of the 20th century such as the pre-war Avant-Garde, the Civil Rights Movement, Minimalism, and Conceptualism.
The exhibition’s title, “Becoming Imperceptible,” suggests how Pendleton’s work, in borrowing from so many other sources, operates as a counter-portrait. In contrast to traditional portraits, which contextualize a subject within a setting or against a background, Pendleton’s works abstract the people, literature, films, and words they depict. With collage, layering, and repetition, among other formal techniques, Pendleton distorts his subjects, prompting the viewer to recognize and reconsider familiar cultural referents and perceive them anew.
Adam Pendleton: Becoming Imperceptible occupies the second floor of MCA Denver, where it is on view July 15–September 25. It features a selection of the artist’s Black Dada Paintings (2008—), Black Lives Matter Paintings (2015), and code poems (2016), as well as a three-screen installation of My Education: A Portrait of David Hilliard (2011–2014). The exhibition was organized by Andrea Andersson, The Helis Foundation Chief Curator of Visual Arts at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, where it is on view April 1–June 16.
Adam Pendleton was born in 1984 in Richmond, Virginia. He attended the Artspace Independent Study Program in Pietrasanta, Italy (2000–2002), and his work has been shown internationally since that time at venues including the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (Indiana), de Appel Arts Center and the Kunstverein, Amsterdam (The Netherlands), The Kitchen (New York), and the Salina Art Center (Kansas). He lives and works in Germantown and Brooklyn, New York.
