Sitting Pretty
Sing It Like You Mean It

Derrick Adams is a multidisciplinary artist, with a practice that includes painting, sculpture, collage, performance, video, and public installations. Adams’ work is known for its cubist-like, geometric forms that coalesce into colorful, figurative compositions of contemporary Black life and culture. The artist expands the dialogue around these subjects, often depicting moments of normalcy, leisure, joy, perseverance, and success. Embedded in his practice is a fascination with the “structure” of identity—how we see ourselves, how we project ourselves outwardly to the world, how others perceive us, and how media, visual culture, and consumerism seep into and impact each of these constructs. Through his signature collage style, Adams deconstructs and reassembles Black archetypes seen in advertisements, TV shows, music videos, and national news, and in the process, lays bare the inherent cultural and racial stereotypes that are pervasive throughout popular culture.

For the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard, Adams presents two works, Sitting Pretty (2016) and Sing It Like You Mean It (2016). Both works hail from the artist’s Live and In Color series, which focuses on the pivotal moment between the 1970s and 1990s as national television attempted to more realistically reflect the diversity of its audience. Key to this shift in representation, however, was a portrayal of Black personalities as overly dramatized, larger-than-life, and exaggerated. Both Sitting Pretty and Sing It Like You Mean It are framed by vintage wood-grain finish TVs, complete with the classic VHF (Very High Frequency) and UHF (Ultra High Frequency) knobs found in color televisions of the 70s and 80s. Consistent with this theme, Adams has backgrounded both works with bars of color from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) test pattern, used to calibrate the color balance on TV screens. The artist also borrows this palette to delineate the angular faces of both works’ central figures.

Sing It Like You Mean It depicts a diva in a glittery gown, performing on what appears to be a TV set stage, such as those used for talk shows or reality TV singing competitions. She is dramatically spotlit from above; her arm reaches out and her head tilts back as she sings. Behind her are two notably vacant microphone stands with disembodied mouths, seemingly mid-song, hovering just above the mic grilles. The background singers have fully metamorphosed, assuming the form of red and blue bars of color. Sitting Pretty is composed of several vibrant, contrasting patterns that come together to form the trappings of a living room—a couch, pillows, a small houseplant. The work is foregrounded by a man in a loud polka dot robe and wayfarer sunglasses. He smiles through the screen, his eyes hidden by his oversized shades, as he kicks his feet up and lounges on a couch. Though the central figures in both Sitting Pretty and Sing It Like You Mean It are alone, they seemingly command their spaces with confidence and ease.

Derrick Adams artworks courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.