Derrick Adams AMERICAN, b. 1970

Overview

In a diverse, exceptionally prolific practice that spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, drawing, and video, Derrick Adams embraces pop culture and radical depictions of leisure in Black American communities. His work often features fractured surfaces and flat planes of bold color. He has collaged together images from early TV shows and made innumerable joyful portraits of Black subjects. Adams earned his BFA at Pratt Institute and his MFA at Columbia University. His work has been exhibited in New York, Miami, London, Paris, Rome, and Johannesburg, and belongs in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among other institutions. On the secondary market, Adams’s work regularly commands six figures.

Works