The work of Adam Pendleton (Richmond, United States, 1984) raises unprecedented perspectives about abstractionism in contemporary art. The artist pushes the boundaries of representation through the formal and conceptual juxtaposition of elements using a combinatorial language that involves continuous processes of writing and rewriting and the idea of flux.

From 2008 onwards, Adam Pendleton began to articulate his entire artistic production around the idea of Black Dada — a kind of visual philosophy of incomplete postulates and continuous research into the relationship between blackness, abstract art and avant-garde artistic movements. Entangling stories that, at first glance, don’t manifest explicit links, this research is transposed from his compendiums of graphic materials, documents and texts to the artist’s pictorial work. In this “radical juxtaposition” of references, Adam Pendleton questions the legacy of modernism today, reactivates the ideals of the historical avant-garde and challenges the distinctions between past and present, legibility and intangibility. In his own perception, Black Dada, the basic idea behind his work, reveals itself as a way of “talking about the future by talking about the past”.

Toy Soldier (Notes on Robert E. Lee, Richmond, Virginia/Strobe), 2021–2022

Video, PB, sound, 6’55”

Courtesy of the artist.

Caution: this artwork contains strobing light, which may affect people with photosensitive epilepsy or other photosensitivities.

Through the play of light and shadow, the superimposition of graphic elements and stroboscopic light movements, Toy Soldier (Notes on Robert E. Lee, Richmond, Virginia/Strobe) (2021–2022) presents a turbulent historical time, embodied in the image of the statue of Robert E. Lee ― a Confederate general in the American Civil War. A vortex of sound and imagery is created between the wavering image of the statue and its graffiti-covered pedestal and the sound composition by musician Hahn Rowe, with excerpts from the digitally distorted voice of poet Amiri Baraka reciting the poem Dope. Within it, the ghosts of America’s slave-owning past are confronted by the revolutionary spirit of the recent demonstrations by the anti-racist and civil rights movements, which, since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, have taken to the streets of most of the country’s cities.