Derrick Adams incorporates visual images referencing children’s storybooks and educational television programs, alluding to mechanisms of social and cultural imprinting, self-awareness, inner-struggle and difference. Suggestive of narrative, this multi-genre work employs costuming and the paraphernalia of play to create colorful scenarios that explore what makes us wildly differentiated creatures. His work confronts appearances and social context, alluding to the way things seem but may not be. From the perspective of inappropriateness and dysfunction, Adams produces exaggerations illustrating the delicacies of interaction between the child and the anonymously costumed, adult figure. The work is created from the perspective of someone who hasn’t crossed into the stage where restrictions are placed on our inclinations to explore – before sexuality is projected upon us.

Derrick Adams is an alumni of Columbia University and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been exhibited widely, including in PS1’s Greater New York show and Triple Candie and Participant Inc., NY.