Derrick Adams Flirts With the Idea of Sensuality in Come as You Are @ Gagosian in Los Angeles

 

Derrick Adams, Be the Table, 2023. © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: Jeff McLane

 

In Derrick Adams’ debut exhibition with the Gagosian, the artist continues to develop pictorial vignettes centering the Black figure, this time in new works borne from the artist’s imagined invitation to the real or fictional personalities he paints.

The exhibition’s title offers encouragement to be present without the need to conceal one’s true self, dreams, and aspirations—a prompt to shed the pressures of adaptation and conformity. Adams counters hackneyed narratives by presenting figures in moments of carefree leisure, inspired by his belief in the constructive power of scenes that uplift and support Black culture. Adding elements of fantastical daydreams along with a few icons familiar from previous series, he dramatizes lived experience and self-actualization in compositions that balance vivid and muted tones, flat planes and multidimensional space.

Come as You Are is on view through October 28 @ Gagosian, 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills

“The Beat Goes On" Curated by Derrick Adams @ SVA Chelsea Gallery in New York

SVA’s fall 2016 art programming launches with “The Beat Goes On,” an exhibition featuring work by Elia Alba, Kevin Beasley, Paul D. Miller, a.k.a., D.J. Spooky, and Tameka Norris, a.k.a. Meka Jean, and curated by visual artist Derrick Adams. For “The Beat Goes On,” the SVA Chelsea Gallery has been transformed into four distinct listening rooms, each presenting a solo show by one of the featured artists. Encompassing photography, sculpture, installation, performance and video works, each room takes music and the history of recorded and transmitted sound as its inspiration. “The Beat Goes On" Curated by Derrick Adam will be on view until September 17, 2016 at SVA Chelsea Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, New York. Photographs by Adam Lehrer