Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton. Not quite.
In person, he is terrifyingly intelligent, but mild-
mannered and deliberative. Pace CEO Marc Glimcher
describes it best: ‘He has the soul of a gospel choir
conductor and the mind of an existential philosopher.’
We are in Pendleton’s studio in Brooklyn’s Sunset
Park, four months ahead of his third show at Pace’s
London gallery. The main space is almost clinical in
its cleanliness; on arrival, guests are asked to remove
their shoes and change into grey padded slippers.
There are artworks leaning against the walls and one
another, but also a conspicuous amount of reading
material filling bookshelf after bookshelf. Which makes
sense in that Pendleton’s latest book, titled Black Dada
Reader, is organised like a reading pack for a university
course, meant to give shape to a concept that has
guided his practice for more than a decade. Black (as in
Black Dada), he says, ‘is a cultural construct that shapes
our view of history, aesthetics and theory.’ Combining
this with Dada, the art movement that emerged in
a volatile Europe after the First World War, means he
is publishing an essay on racial division by political
thinker WEB Dubois alongside German poet Hugo
Ball’s Dada Manifesto, abstract painter Ad Reinhardt’s
musings on the next revolution in art, and a Q&A
with the contemporary choreographer Trajal Harrell.
‘I think this juxtaposition allows the reader to perceive
things about each text that wouldn’t necessarilycome to the surface otherwise,’ says Pendleton. (^) »
so its installation in early May, a stone’s throw from
Frieze New York, also seems representative of the
Brooklyn-based conceptual artist’s spectacular rise.
Born in 1984 in Richmond, Virginia, Pendleton
moved to New York City at the age of 18 to become
an artist. That year, one of his paintings was included
in a group show at Gallery 128, selected by one of
Sol LeWitt’s assistants. LeWitt came and traded one
of his own gouaches for it, becoming Pendleton’s first
collector. By 2005, Pendleton had done a solo show
at Yvon Lambert; two years later, he made a splash at
performance art festival Performa with a rousing
monologue on family, marriage, AIDS and racism,
against the backdrop of a live gospel choir. He’s since
completed a residency at MoMA, become the youngest
person to sign with Pace Gallery since the 1970s, and
shown at the Venice Biennale. More recently, his joint
proposal with David Adjaye to design a Martin Luther
King Memorial in Boston has made the shortlist.
One would be forgiven for imagining Pendleton as
a fast-moving, fast-talking firebrand, in the mould of
PENDLETON’S STUDIO WITH
RECENT WORKS, INCLUDING
A LARGE CANVAS, UNTITLED
(A VICTIM OF AMERICAN
DEMOCRACY), 2017, RIGHT,
AND TWO GROUPS OF
PRINTOUTS, ON THE FLOOR,
FOR THE ‘OUR IDEAS’ SERIES,
WAITING TO BE SCANNED AND
TURNED INTO SILKSCREEN
FILES. THE FINAL WORKS WILL
BE ON SHOW AT PACE LONDON
‘He has the soul of a gospel
choir conductor and the mind
of an existential philosopher’
Art
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