Derrick Adams

Portfolio of Artwork 893-895

An unsigned note in ARTspace describes Derrick Adams as multidisciplinary artist who

explores collage, sculpture, drawing, performance, and video in an attempt to understand the force of popular culture. . . . his work highlights the intersection of art history, music, literature, fashion, and the black experience. Using deconstructivist theories, Adams fragments and manipulates surface and structure to reconfigure familiar objects—and the perception of ideas attached to them. Using popular iconography, the artist attempts to shed light on the relationship between man and monument, coexisting as representations of one another.

from http://www.artspace.com/derrick_adams

Derrick Adams writes in his current artist statement that

My practice is rooted in Deconstructivist philosophies and the formation and perception of ideals attached to objects, colors, textures, symbols, and ideologies. Focus is on fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface—exploring shapeshifting forces of popular culture and its counter balances. Creative process is invested in ideas charging formal constructs. Medium works its own favor as a formal language, communicating and exploring ideas of self image and forward projection. Architectural processes and their different presentation strategies are important in the work and serve as a comparative investigation into the physical construction of the figure.

In his response to LeRonn P. Brooks’s first interview questions with him (July 23, 2015), Derrick Adams’s position on his own current artwork complements—and extends and refines—the foregoing descriptions:

BROOKS:

Can we begin with just an introduction to your current work?

ADAMS:

When I’m making work I don’t really think about being any particular type of artist. I don’t consider myself a painter, a sculptor, video or performance artist. I do think that there are certain ways to communicate ideas about culture and cultural perspectives through different types of material like your body, a piece of paper, or whatever. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel. I am really trying to highlight certain aspects of culture. The culture that I really think about is significant and a culture that has been appropriated by other cultures. I try to highlight it in a way of making work that helps the viewer to understand certain aspects of history, and contributors to history, through acknowledging [social] movements and movements within art history. I then try to “talk” about what I’m interested in with relevance while contributing to things that have already existed here in a certain way. Also to talk about how certain cultural perspectives come when doing something very simple like poetry, dealing with a music soundtrack, or dealing with something that is very much identifiably connected to whoever is making something I’m interested in. What they are reading? And what culture do they claim to be a part of?

BROOKS:

Your work, and I am thinking about your collage work, is art historical in its references to historically significant artists. I am thinking of Bearden, definitely, and the really clever and smart ways you foreshorten your figures in space. I also think you want your discourse to go toward the things you have curiosities about. But what is it that you feel you bring to the conversation around art history that is unique?

ADAMS:

Well, think about the music or the fashion industry. I think the thing that is really successful about music and fashion is that you don’t create a whole new music just from nothing. You reinterpret other music genres and other fashion movements that have happened. You just alter them to talk about what is happening now and how they apply, now, through materials. You change the materials of fashion. With music we’ve become more digital. You incorporate digital with the live and the analog. I think it’s the same way with art. I like Bearden. I think there are certain aspects of Bearden that people may have more of a romantic relationship to, but as a black person I think I have a unique perspective on his work. I look at his work and the story around it. I look at it and...