Adam Pendleton discusses slowness and weight at Friedman Benda show.

3 hours ago7 min read2 comments

Walking into Friedman Benda's newly reoriented New York gallery space for 'Adam Pendleton: Who Owns Geometry Anyway?' feels less like entering a traditional art exhibition and more like stepping directly into a charged, visual argument. The show, which opened to a hushed yet palpable buzz among the city's art cognoscenti, immediately asserts itself not as a passive display but as an active interrogation of form, history, and ownership.Pendleton, an artist whose work consistently operates at the intersection of Blackness, abstraction, and the archive, has transformed the white cube into a dynamic field where geometry is both the subject and the object of scrutiny. His signature visual language—a potent mix of silkscreen, painting, and collage—is deployed here with a deliberate, almost meditative sense of slowness and a profound physical weight.One cannot simply glance at these pieces; they demand a durational engagement, a willingness to unpack the layers of meaning embedded in their stark, graphic lines and textured, monochromatic surfaces. The 'slowness' critics are noting isn't a lack of energy, but a compositional gravity, a careful pacing that forces the viewer to contend with the historical baggage carried by geometric forms, forms that have been claimed by both modernist purity and systemic power structures.The 'weight' is both literal, in the material presence of the works, and metaphorical, echoing the heavy questions of cultural appropriation and liberation that Pendleton's oeuvre consistently raises. It brings to mind the cinematic tension in a Kubrick film, where a static, symmetrical shot is loaded with an almost unbearable significance, or the way a single, recurring motif in a Bergman masterpiece can unravel an entire character's psyche. This exhibition doesn't offer easy answers to its titular question; instead, it masterfully frames the gallery as a stage where the very principles of order and structure are put on trial, challenging us to consider who has historically been allowed to dictate visual order and, more importantly, who has the right to dismantle and reclaim it.

#featured

#Adam Pendleton

#Friedman Benda

#geometry

#art exhibition

#gallery opening

#contemporary art

#slowness

#weight

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