Public Installation
Derrick Adams
Art on the Mart
April 14–July 5, 2023, 8:30pm daily
The Mart, Chicago
artonthemart.com
Art on the Mart, an innovative digital art project that transforms the Chicago architectural landmark into a larger-than-life canvas, will initiate its 2023 programming with a new work by Derrick Adams. Titled Funtime Unicorn: Ruby Rides through Four Seasons (2023), the animation builds upon Adams’s whimsical Funtime Unicorn project, which celebrates Black joy, love, and play. Featuring a display of colorful backgrounds and light tunnels across the façade of the Mart, the ten-minute piece will be on view each night at 8:30pm for one hour. Realized in collaboration with the graphic design studio the Channel, the work features an original score, background vocals, and story narration by Cleo Reed, alongside original music by trumpeter Dave Guy of the Roots.
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Derrick Adam’s Funtime Unicorn: Ruby Rides through Four Seasons (2023) on the façade of the Mart, Chicago. Artwork © Derrick Adams. Photo: courtesy Art on the Mart
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Public Installation
Derrick Adams
Moynihan Connector Billboard
January 11–April 22, 2024
High Line, New York
www.thehighline.org
Sitting Pretty and Sing It Like You Mean It (both 2016) by Derrick Adams are on view on the High Line’s Moynihan Connector Billboard at its location on Dyer Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets in New York. The double-sided billboard features Adams’s two commanding depictions of Black people, whose warm self-assurance is broadcast to the park visitors and passersby below. The figures on each side are set against the Technicolor backdrop of a television test card, suggesting the partial reset of conventions within popular culture that took place as Black culture gained greater representation in the latter part of the twentieth century. A public park built on a once-abandoned elevated rail line in Manhattan, the High Line is also a nonprofit organization that works with communities and reimagines public spaces to create connected, healthy neighborhoods and cities.
Derrick Adams, Sing It Like You Mean It, 2016, installation view, High Line, New York © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: courtesy High Line, New York
Installation
Derrick Adams
Dewdrop Inn
December 3, 2023–Fall 2026
Baltimore Museum of Art
artbma.org
Derrick Adams’s Dewdrop Inn (2023) has been installed at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of the reopening of the Patricia and Mark Joseph Education Center, which offers new opportunities for hands-on art making and engagement for families, students, and art lovers of all ages. The installation, which features a match-up card game designed by the artist, invites young museumgoers to interact with one another and learn about the museum’s rich collection of African American art.
Derrick Adams, Dewdrop Inn, 2023 © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: Maximilian Franz
Shop Takeover
Derrick Adams
RECESS
Opening reception: Tuesday, October 10, 6–8pm
October 2–November 6, 2023
Gagosian Shop, London
Derrick Adams is taking over the Gagosian Shop in London’s Burlington Arcade with a selection of new merchandise designed with imagery of recreation, self-reflection, and sweet treats. Offerings include T-shirts adorned with icons from his paintings as well as a poster produced in conjunction with Come as You Are, his exhibition at Gagosian, Beverly Hills. The Fall 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly, with a cover image by Adams and a feature by Jewels Dodson reflecting on the artist’s recent works, is also available.
The Shop takeover accompanies RECESS, an exhibition of new work in the gallery upstairs that includes a painting and a video whose imagery relate to Adams’s interactive sculptures Funtime Unicorn Spring Riders (2022), which are installed in the gallery and along the length of the historic arcade.
Derrick Adams takeover at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2023. Artwork © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
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Laguna~B
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Richard Armstrong
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