A major figure in the contemporary American art scene, Adam Pendleton rethinks painting by questioning its relationship to process, language, and abstraction. He constructs his works through layers of gestures, signs, and fragmented forms, composing a fragmented score where painting is listened to as much as it is looked at.
For his 50e To mark the anniversary of his birth, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington is dedicating a major exhibition to Adam Pendleton. Entitled "Love, Queen," this first solo presentation of the artist in the capital brings together recent paintings and a video work in an exploration of his non-representational artistic research and its relationship to memory, creative movement, and time.
Born in Virginia in 1984, Pendleton has established himself with a distinctive visual language that deliberately blurs the lines between painting, drawing, and photography. His process begins on paper, where drips, splashes, geometric shapes, textual fragments, and ink shards evoking dislocated letters intertwine. These compositions, sometimes controlled, sometimes improvised, are then photographed and superimposed using silkscreen printing, creating works where gesture and reproduction confront each other within the same visual space. The result is a play of shifts, transparencies, and layers where each image bears the trace of its own process.
This method relies on a constant tension between control and randomness, where the unforeseen—that of the liquid, the pressure, or the grain—introduces a living and unpredictable dimension. Pendleton uses it as a visual syntax: a writing that oscillates between word and matter. In his series Black Dada, Days, WE ARE NOTand in his new paintings Composition et MovementThe black of the gesso becomes the basis of a pictorial language. Each of these works, composed of two colors on dark backgrounds, combines formal rigor with a sensitivity of gesture. Letters, stains, and signs overlap until they achieve an almost musical density. "Painting is as much an act of performance as it is an act of translation and transformation," explains the artist.
The exhibition, designed for the museum's interior galleries, offers an immersive experience. The canvases respond to one another like musical variations, playing on repetition and nuance. The viewer perceives the continuity of a motif, the subtle changes from one composition to another, the letters that fade or stretch. Rhythm becomes structure, and structure becomes an experience for the eye. "Love, Queen" highlights the formal and emotional dimensions of the artist's work, revealing a painting that engages in a dialogue with both the memory of modernism and the vitality of the present.
The monumental video work Resurrection City Revisited (Who Owns Geometry Anyway?) extends this approach. Projected from floor to ceiling, it combines archival images, geometric shapes, and bursts of light. Views of Resurrection CityThe encampment erected for several days on the National Mall in 1968. Through Hahn Rowe's editing and soundtrack—a composition blending brass, woodwinds, and percussion—Pendleton articulates still images, movement, and sonic rhythms in a composition where abstraction and representation interact. The whole acts as a visual breath, a natural extension of the painting in time and space.
Curated by Evelyn C. Hankins, "Love, Queen" continues the tradition of major exhibitions at the Hirshhorn that explore the role of abstraction today. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and public programs designed to further explore contemporary painting and its language.
The museum director, Melissa Chiu, emphasizes the significance of this presentation: “The choice to present Adam Pendleton’s recent works on the occasion of our 50th anniversarye The anniversary is deliberate. Its exhibition reflects the Hirshhorn's mission as a 21st-century art museum.e a century that amplifies the voice of artists who react in real time to history and place.
With "Love, Queen," Pendleton demonstrates how painting can remain a territory of invention. Through repetition, layering, and gesture, he transforms the surface into a space for reflection and rhythm. His works remind us that abstraction, far from being a withdrawal, can be a form of visual writing: a way of thinking with the eyes and listening to painting as a language in its own right.
“Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen”
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Ave SW and 7th St SW, Washington, DC (United States)
