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Adam Pendleton, Untitled (WE ARE NOT), 2019, silkscreen ink and black gesso on canvas, 96" × 69" (243.8 cm × 175.3 cm) © Adam Pendleton

Adam Pendleton

Adam Pendleton, a central figure in American painting, continuously redefines the medium as it relates to process and abstraction. Upending linear compositional logic, Pendleton’s paintings are created by a distilled layering of gesture, fragment, and form that mirrors the cacophony of contemporary experience.

Each painting comes to life through its expressionistic flourishes, stark contrasts, and subtle use of material, tone, and finish, as well as a precision reminiscent of minimal and conceptual art. Generative and poetic, his paintings create fluid and essential spaces for seeing, thinking, and feeling.

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Adam Pendleton, Black Dada (A/K), 2017–18, silkscreen ink and black gesso on canvas, two parts, 96" × 76" (243.8 cm × 193 cm) © Adam Pendleton

Pendleton’s painting process begins on paper by exploring the full breadth of mark-making. He layers paint, spray paint, ink, and watercolor, while integrating fragmentary text and geometric forms through stenciling techniques. These works on paper are photographed and subsequently combined using a screen printing process. Blurring distinctions among painting, drawing, and photography, the resulting paintings are a tangible manifestation of his belief in painting as a powerful “visual and conceptual force.”

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Adam Pendleton, Untitled (A Victim of American Democracy), 2017, silkscreen ink and spray paint on canvas, 84" × 60" (213.36 cm × 152.40 cm) © Adam Pendleton

In 2024, he was honored with the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2024–25); Adam Pendleton: Blackness, White, and Light, mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2023–24); Adam Pendleton: To Divide By, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri (2023–24); Quiet as It’s Kept: 2022 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022); Adam Pendleton: These Things We’ve Done Together, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2022); and Adam Pendleton: Who Is Queen?, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2021–22). His landmark solo exhibition Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen opened in April 2025 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and will be on view through January 2027.

Pendleton’s work is held in numerous public collections worldwide, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Tate Modern, London; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

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Adam Pendleton, Ishmael in the Garden: A Portrait of Ishmael Houston-Jones, 2018, black-and-white and color video, 24 minutes 15 seconds, dimensions variable. Installation view at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (2019). © Adam Pendleton

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Adam Pendleton, Untitled (masks), 2018, silkscreen ink on mylar, overall dimensions variable 51-1/2" × 39-1/2" (130.8 cm × 100.3 cm), 4 sheets, each 54-5/16" × 42-5/16" (138 cm × 107.5 cm), 4 artist's frame, each © Adam Pendleton

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Adam Pendleton, OK DADA OK BLACK DADA OK (WE NEED), 2018, silkscreen ink and spray paint on canvas, 84" × 60" (213.4 cm × 152.4 cm) © Adam Pendleton

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Adam Pendleton, System of Display, D (AROUND/Jean-Marie Straub, Not Reconciled, Or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules, 1965), 2011, silkscreen ink on plexiglass and mirror, 9-13/16" × 9-13/16" × 3-1/8" (24.9 cm × 24.9 cm × 7.9 cm) © Adam Pendleton

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Adam Pendleton, System of Display, I (WRITING/Art of Black Africa, Kunsthaus Zurich, 1970), 2018, silkscreen ink on plexiglass and mirror, 9-13/16" × 9-13/16" × 3-1/8" (24.9 cm × 24.9 cm × 7.9 cm) © Adam Pendleton