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Derrick Adams

DEPICTING Kendrick Lamar

“I continue to focus on aesthetics and practices found within the urban environment, including those that participate in and influence global culture. Extracting key elements to create minimal geometric constructions, the subject is pared down to what is essential to the viewer’s experience and set beneath or behind the shifted perspective of an imagined cityscape.

Through this fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, the individual is reintroduced as a sculptural form. Traditional West African statuary – where artisans bring forth richly distinct character through highlighting what is essential – influences in work.” – Derrick Adams

A collage portrait of Kendrick Lamar, as if he is peering through bars or a window, the bars being made of roads with cars on them.
Figure in the Urban Landscape #25 (portrait of Kendrick Lamar) [Kendrick Lamar], 2018. Derrick Adams. Courtesy of the artist.

Artist

Derrick Adams

(b. 1970) Derrick Adams is a New York–based, multidisciplinary artist working in performance, video, sound, sculpture, and textile- and paper-based collage. His work is rooted in deconstructivist philosophies: fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, and the marriage of complex and improbable forms. Adams examines the force of popular culture and the media on the perception and construction of self-image. Much of his work is centered around black identity, often referencing patterns, images, and themes of black culture in America.

A color photo of a smiling African American man wearing a silver chain and a blue-and-gold patterned shirt.

[Kendrick Lamar], 2018. Andrew Lih. Courtesy of Fuzheado/Andrew Lih.

Man of Change

Kendrick Lamar


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