See new paintings by Derrick Adams with Situation Comedy at Gagosian's Davies Street gallery.
Composed with brightly hued, faceted planes of acrylic paint and fabric collage, Adams’s paintings present visions of Black Americana through figures engaged in everyday leisure and enlivened by individual daydreams and fantasies.
The paintings convey serio-comic moments of conflict and resolution that draw from the narrative strategies of television sitcoms and movies, sharing a sense of humour and familiarity integral to the genre. They reflect the significance of pop culture and comedy in defining the joys and contradictions of contemporary life.
Each painting has elements of comedic storytelling, establishing situations with imagined characters and humorous juxtapositions, before landing the punchline. Good Egg, Bad Bunny (2024) relays a nostalgic vision of Easter from a child’s perspective, with an egg hunt and a life-size chocolate bunny that has been conspicuously nibbled. An older woman holding a palm leaf highlights the intersection of the holiday’s communal and commercial aspects with ritualistic and religious meanings.
Baked In (2024) centres on a man lying on a gingham-patterned place mat or picnic blanket at an ambiguous scale, his body overlaid by a pie in a humorous take on Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. He holds flags and fireworks that symbolise the celebration of Independence Day in the United States, while flies and ants invade the scene. Only Happy Thoughts (2024) pictures a contented woman dreaming of a hairstyle composed of Tootsie Roll candies, embodying a sweetness that is both pure and excessive.
