Derrick Adams: Network

CAAM presents the work of New York-based multidisciplinary artist Derrick Adams, who creatively employs collage, sculpture, video, installation, and performance to examine how television and media shape contemporary culture. Images of classic African American television shows like Sanford and Son and luminaries including Oprah Winfrey, Diahann Carroll, and O.J. Simpson along with representations of television monitors with SMPTE color bars abound in Network, which features large-scale, brightly colored mixed media collages, a performance video, and installations where visitors can record themselves. Adams riffs on late-20th century African American television iconography while at the same time critiquing consumerism and capitalism, raising questions about race, class, and gender as expressed in popular culture at large, and television entertainment in particular. These pertinent ideas take on a certain significance in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.