‍An Abstraction, Adam Pendleton’s first solo show at Pace’s New York gallery in ten years, marks a continuation of his career-long project of creating spaces of engagement and “fighting for the right to exist in and through abstraction.”

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What does it feel like to return to New York? Did you intend to come up with a new idea and body of work or was the intention to build upon the ideas you have been sitting and working with?

Gallery exhibitions, in terms of timing, have a level of predictability that institutional or museum shows don’t necessarily have. Many artists who have a gallery in New York will do a show every two to four years. I purposely wanted to step out of that rhythm. How would my work, and my expectations of it, change?

One of the most consequential things that did happen in those ten years was the opportunity to do the show at MoMA. That opportunity allowed me to think through the exhibition itself as form, which became integral to the shows I did subsequently, particularly at Mumok in Vienna (2023-24) and my current exhibition An Abstraction at Pace Gallery. Immediately upon entering the exhibition space, you begin to realise that the show does not feature paintings and drawings on the walls of a white cube. Still, somehow the paintings and drawings are defining how the space itself functions.

It is interesting to consider how the paintings displayed within the gallery are conditioned to work and exist in a confined space. However, you characterise confined space as generative because working with conditions can be understood as an attempt to find modes of freedom – through existing and remaining within the structures and systems they inhabit. Furthermore, there is a duality or dance between the paintings and drawings and the form of the space. They’re complementary to one another, yet they’re also even at odds.

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In a previous interview for PIN-UP magazine, you stated: “For me, space, object, and idea are inseparable, and I view architecture in perhaps a strange way as the creation of an object. Sometimes it’s the fabrication of an object, while sometimes it’s the literal space that the object creates.” How do you believe your exhibition An Abstraction has played with this ideology and construct of the creation of an object and the awareness of space created by the object?

What year did I say that?

2015.

Interesting.

Do you think your philosophies have completely steered away from acknowledging the gallery beyond a space of display?

No, it’s interesting that I was thinking in those terms ten years ago. It made me realise that one of the things that I subconsciously wanted to do was to give myself time to allow those ideas to mature. It is fascinating that I was able to say it ten years ago, but it wasn’t anything you would have necessarily experienced when encountering the work. That is what has changed.

Was this an intention with An Abstraction to stimulate, and find a way for the audience to open up the space? Referring to the experiential of your exhibition – as you enter, we are confronted by these three living bodies: Black Dada (K), Black Dada (D) and Black Dada (B). As much as they’re close in proximity, they all work in and with different tensions.

Yes, how the first three paintings are situated in space is very intentional. I think the mood, if you will, of these works varies. Black Dada (B) has a very atmospheric presence, whereas Black Dada (D) is very sculptural, and Black Dada (K) is more expressionistic. It’s as though these three moods or approaches are setting the stage for the different methods and modes at work within the paintings and drawings throughout the exhibition as a whole. It is interesting to think about how a group of works can set the scene or set the terms for the encounters one will have as one moves through the space of the exhibition.

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Perhaps we can even refer to this as what you call the ‘organising principle’ that provides us with a means to engage and encounter the works on view in one of its plethora of attitudes.

An Abstraction is in certain ways a classical exhibition: paintings and drawings. But the form of the exhibition is not traditional. The architecture encourages a deeper kind of looking. A deeper awareness of self. I’m convinced that if you always hang works on a white wall, it doesn’t demand the same kind of attention that a more layered or contrapuntal dynamic demands. One of the things that I love about An Abstraction is that many things cut in and out of your sightline at different moments. There’s often this sense that everything is happening at once. Still, there is also a very real sense of a singular moment, a singular encounter, and it is arguably up to the viewer to choose how they interact with the work. In a way, the exhibition establishes terms for the space and yet also offers enough flexibility for the visitor to navigate it as they see fit.

It is enlightening that you speak of this, for example Untitled (Days), 2023-24 – no.90249 and Untitled (Days), 2023-24 – no.90248 both work as a pair because there is an intimate dialogue happening between them, due to their proximity. I believe both works are doing something important within this conversation. It implies a level of agreement or tension where they rely on one another to draw out different attitudes within them.

Where Untitled (Days), 2023-24 – no.90249 has a more stable composition, Untitled (Days), 2023-24 – no.90248 has a more expressionistic character, portraying an erasure of history. In this case, I was thinking about your idea of the organising principle, that determines or as you said, “sets the scene.” However, in this case, the organisation is being disturbed or taken from its fixed position. Furthermore, there is a playfulness that utilises the act of vanishing and erasure to imply intentionality and complicity. Complicity disturbs how we understand the laws and rules of certain systems.

Yes, there are different tempos within the space. This is intentional or required – the smooth space negates what’s potentially bubbling underneath the surface. Yes, the Days paintings you are referring to have a dialogic relationship. I thought carefully about how I would pair those paintings. It does seem as though one work is heading in one direction, while the other is heading somewhere else. This is one way a visual vocabulary evolves and does something akin to, or that we associate with, written and spoken language.

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Lastly, would you be willing to share some of your insights and thoughts that generated An Abstraction and are also developing ideas today?

I like to exist in capacious spaces, capacious moments even, where many things are happening because that is what is real. It is how we experience the world around us. There is no singular moment in this world, there is no singular gesture or singular act. Every gesture, every moment, every act exists alongside many other gestures, moments, and acts. I want to create paintings, drawings, and exhibitions that acknowledge this and bring the complex real to life.

This is a bit strange because what focuses me the most is my curiosity. I am talking about many things happening at once but at the end of the day, I have this singular focus on the work that I am making. I am really wrestling with why I’m making it, how I’m making it and pushing myself on or towards the next thing. Which, of course, is unknown to me at the moment, so I am in this perpetual process of discovery.

The room for coincidence and chance is what is fruitful or in your case beautiful – the possibility of an alternative. It makes me consider what this alternative speaks of. If not loudly – whispering, if not coherently – incoherently. I feel as though these gestures are implicating me in these moments…

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Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1984, Adam Pendleton completed the Artspace Independent Study Program in Pietrasanta, Italy, in 2002. His work has been featured at major museums around the world, including solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Le Consortium, Dijon, France; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland; and Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, among others.