Derrick Adams

Born 1970 in Baltimore, MD
Lives and works in New York

EDUCATION

MFA, Columbia University, 2003

BFA, Pratt Institute, 1996

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Derrick Adams destabilizes cultural understanding of urban and identity politics through performance, collage, sculpture and installation. His ongoing collage series, “Deconstruction Worker,” is motivated by architectural vocabulary. Influenced by the exploration of the urban dweller, Adams implements geometric constructions of human figures in an ambiguous state between construction and deconstruction.

Adams is the recipient of the Studio Museum’s 2016 Joyce Alexander Wein Prize, a 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and an honored finalist for the 2011 William H. Johnson Prize. He’s exhibited and performed at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum of Art, PERFORMA, Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Adams’ work is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Birmingham Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Progressive Insurance, JP Morgan Chase Collection, Microsoft Art Collection, Estee Lauder Collection, University of Maryland, and the Ford Foundation.

– text courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery

GALLERIES

Tilton Gallery, New York
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
Gallerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris
Vigo Gallery, London

SELECT PERMANENT COLLECTIONS

Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
JP Morgan Chase, New York
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
Progressive Insurance, Mayfield OH

 


Work


Exhibitions

  • All That I AM

    All That I AM is an edition series organized by curator Larry Ossei-Mensah in collaboration with Art+Culture Projects that explores contemporary artists’ engagements with the complexities of cultural identity. The fourth installment of this series features Delphine Desane, February James, Tajh Rust, and Vaughn Spann, who all center the human condition and emotion in their work.