Across mediums, Adam Pendleton’s practice is defined by its simultaneous embrace of the expressionistic, the minimal, and the conceptual—often within the context of a single work. He is deeply invested in reimagining form in relation to, and in tension with, the dominant themes and ideas of the historical avant-garde that have shaped modern and contemporary aesthetics. Seemingly simple geometric figures—circles, squares, triangles—become points of departure for complex material, visual, and theoretical investigations. Concerns from one mode of working—painting in relationship to photography, or sculpture in relationship to design—are continuously transposed, translated, and transcended. The result is a body of work that is formally striking, intellectually agile, and unexpectedly inventive.
In 2024, he was honored with the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 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; Morgan Library and Museum, 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; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; and the Tate Modern, London.
