Derrick Adams

For “Live and in Color,” Derrick Adams refracts the current nostalgia for all things 1980s and ’90s through arguably its purest form of expression: television. Bright, succinct, reveling in its own exuberance, a series of large-scale collages depicts familiar black characters from popular shows, whose genres are hinted at through the witty planar structuring of color and patterned textiles—swatches of kente cloth are transposed into a man’s shirt, bright Monopoly money printed fabric sets the stage for a game show. Each collage is framed by the facade of a television set made from flattened cardboard and faux-wood paneling, a redoubled mediation that conflates the razor-cut paper edges with the textural fragmenting of electronic feedback: television as seen through collage as seen through television.

Adams’s referential hybrid—including the reductive geometries of Constructivism, the planar rhythms of African masks, and Romare Bearden’s improvisational layering—synthesizes into an economy of form that collapses faces, hair, and clothes into the vivid rainbow stripes of the TV color test screen. Chromatic resonance is at the heart of this playful yet incisive evocation of cultural visibility and perception, his need to excavate beyond the impassive surface of pop. Embodying this slippage between two and three dimensionality, the “Boxhead” series transfers the collaged “screens” into sculptural busts. In lieu of a face, the sculptures’ heads are formed by multifaceted brightly colored shapes, topped by Afros, leopard-print scrunchies, and other hairstyles that contribute to the works’ shift between anonymity and cultural specificity. As contemporary debates about the onscreen roles and characterizations of black performers rage on, the phrase “live and in color” recalls television’s “golden age” while evoking the breathing, vibrant presence and nuanced hues of Adams’s subjects.