Derrick Adams
This first monograph on Derrick Adams was published in advance of Derrick Adams: View Master at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2026), and surveys the full richness of the New York artist’s twenty-five-year career.
Celebrating and expanding on the dialogue around contemporary Black life and culture, Adams has developed a vivid iconography of everyday leisure and the pursuit of happiness. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, sculpture, collage, performance, video, and site-responsive public projects. Combining representational imagery with distinctive planar geometry, he produces multifaceted figures and faces that communicate narratives of resilience and joy.
The publication reproduces 150 of Adams’s most significant works in color and is introduced by Alyssa Alexander, curator and the artist’s studio manager. It includes newly commissioned essays exploring formal, conceptual, and thematic aspects of Adams’s work by curator Hallie Ringle, critic and educator Salamishah Tillet, and curator Dexter Wimberly, as well as an interview with the artist by curator Sandra Jackson-Dumont. Presented in a cloth case, the book features a tipped-on reproduction of Adams’s 2023 painting Be the Table on the front cover.
Estimated shipping date: October 15, 2025
Publisher: Monacelli and Gagosian
Publication date: 2025
Contributors: Alyssa Alexander, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Hallie Ringle, Salamishah Tillet, Dexter Wimberly
Designer: Morcos Key
Printer: Artron Art Group, Shenzhen, China
Distributor: Phaidon Press Limited
Format: Cloth hardcover
Dimensions: 9 7/8 × 11 3/8 inches (25 × 29 cm)
Pages: 248
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-58093-701-6
