Adam Pendleton (b. 1984 Richmond, Virginia), a central figure in contemporary 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 uses 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.
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.”
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 Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (2025–2027); Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st- Century Art and Poetics at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2024–2025); Adam Pendleton: Blackness, White, and Light, at mumok—Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Austria (2023–2024); Adam Pendleton: To Divide By, at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2023–2024); Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2022); Adam Pendleton: These Things We’ve Done Together, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada (2022); and Adam Pendleton: Who Is Queen?, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2021–2022).
Pendleton’s work is part of numerous public collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the National Gallery of Canada, Ontario; and the Tate Modern, London.
Adam Pendleton
Untitled (WE ARE NOT), 2023
silkscreen ink on canvas
96 x 120 inches
(243.8 x 304.8 cm)
Adam Pendleton
Untitled (Composition), 2022
silkscreen ink on Mylar
63 3/4 x 49 1/2 inches
(161.9 x 125.7 cm)
framed:
68 1/4 x 53 x 2 3/8 inches
(173.4 x 134.6 x 6 cm)
Adam Pendleton
Untitled (WE ARE NOT), 2021
silkscreen ink on canvas
120 x 234 x 2 inches
(304.8 x 594.4 x 5.1 cm)
Adam Pendleton
Our Ideas #4, 2018 – 2019
silkscreen ink on Mylar
32 parts, each:
sheet:
38 x 29 inches
(96.5 x 73.7 cm)
framed:
40 3/8 x 31 3/8 inches
(102.6 x 79.7 cm)
Adam Pendleton
still from Just Back from Los Angeles: A Portrait of Yvonne Rainer, 2016 – 2017
single-channel black-and-white video
dimensions variable
13:51 minutes
Adam Pendleton
Untitled (Code Poem), 2016
glazed ceramic
4 rectangle, 7 circle, and 7 square units, each:
rectangle:
6 x 12 x 1 1/2 inches
(15.2 x 30.5 x 3.8 cm)
circle:
6 x 1 1/2 inches
(15.2 x 3.8 cm)
square:
6 x 6 x 1 1/2 inches
(15.2 x 15.2 x 3.8 cm)
Adam Pendleton
WE (we are not successive), 2015
silkscreen ink on mirror-polished stainless steel
W:
43 13/16 x 61 1/2 x 5/8 inches
(111.3 x 156.2 x 1.6 cm)
E:
46 13/16 x 35 5/8 x 5/8 inches
(118.9 x 90.5 x 1.6 cm)
Adam Pendleton
Untitled (water), 2014
silkscreen ink on mirror-polished stainless steel
sheet:
120 x 60 inches
(304.8 x 152.4 cm)
framed:
122 1/8 x 62 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches
(310.2 x 157.8 x 8.9 cm)
Adam Pendleton
Larry Hinton (white), 2012
silkscreen ink on Formica
overall dimensions:
120 x 96 inches
(304.8 x 243.8 cm)
4 panels, each:
120 x 24 inches
(304.8 x 61 cm)
Adam Pendleton
still from Lorraine O'Grady: A Portrait, 2012
single-channel color video
dimensions variable
22:51 minutes
Adam Pendleton
System of Display, IU (WITHOUT/Documenta I, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, 1955), 2010
silkscreen ink on plexiglass and mirror
63 7/8 x 48 7/8 x 3 1/8 inches
(162.2 x 124.1 x 7.9 cm)
Adam Pendleton
Black Dada (LCK/AK/AA), 2008
silkscreen ink on canvas
2 panels, overall:
96 x 76 inches
(243.8 x 193 cm)
each:
48 x 76 inches
(121.9 x 193 cm)