The Master Printers Series
Tandem Press with Derrick Adams
Explorations and celebrations of Black culture and identity in America dominate the work of artist Derrick Adams. Although he is primarily a painter, his practice also includes collage, sculpture, performance, installation, and video. In recent years, he has added printmaking to that list as he has created several fine art print editions with Tandem Press.
Adams’ newest prints, titled Parlay 1-4, continue his Mood Board series from 2017-2021, which were inspired by Black American fashion designer Patrick Kelly (1954-1990). In 1988, Kelly became the first American designer admitted into the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, France’s prestigious association of designers, whose members included Yves Saint Laurent, Sonia Rykiel, and Kelly’s sponsor, Christian Lacroix.
For his 2017 in Harlem project in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem, Adams conducted extensive research on Patrick Kelly at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, culminating in a body of work entitled Patrick Kelly, The Journey. Like Adams, Kelly was known for his creations’ exuberance and joy. He moved to Paris with nothing but his talent in 1978. Kibwe Chase-Marshall, the co-founder of the Kelly Initiative, stated that, “he was part of a community of black, often gay, creatives shaping culture in ways
that defy convention.” His exceptional brilliance led him to the top of the fashion world in Europe and the
United States before his untimely death at the age of thirty-six.
During his research, Adams came across a printed dice pattern Kelly used in a late 1980s ready-towear women’s clothing line. He found Kelly’s iconic pattern inspiring and subsequently incorporated a similar dice pattern in his Parlay prints. The term parlay is associated with many known dice games, meaning to turn an initial stake or winnings from a previous bet into a greater amount by gambling. In urban vernacular, it also means to relax or to have a leisurely time with people you enjoy. Adams refers to both meanings in this suite of prints, seen mainly through his decision to shift the scale of the dice from small to large throughout the series. The opening zipper suggests motion and movement of the body. When viewing all four Parlay images together, the depicted forms shift between varying levels of abstraction and representation, evoking a figure walking toward you on a runway.
Although little to no documented information exists on Kelly’s inspiration for his dice design, Adams’ interpretation of this memorable moment in history is, “Life is a gamble, and the winner takes all!”
Parlay 1-4 were created with screen print and archival inkjet printmaking techniques. In these prints, the dice pattern was screen printed on book cloth. The dress form was inkjet printed, and the zippers were screen printed separately on different types of paper. All those elements were then cut out and collaged onto the main sheet of paper that was screen printed with the flat shapes of color. The range of materials used gives these prints a rich and varied surface quality.
Another body of work Adams began in 2019 and has developed since is titled Beauty World. These images depict mannequin-like portraits of men and women with steely gazes and expressive hairstyles. Inspired by the display windows of beauty shops, wig stores, and braiding and nail salons he often passes in his Brooklyn neighborhood, Adams created this series to reflect on cultural and social rituals connected to beauty. The resulting portraits construct and deconstruct demonstrations of self-representation. They explore Black identity and empowerment achieved through acts of styling, camouflaging, costuming, and adornment.
In 2020, Tandem released four prints related to this body of work. Titled Style Variations, the prints depicted Black men with varying hairstyles and facial hair. Adams returned to the series in 2023 to create five new images of women featuring a pixie cut, space buns, loose waves, a side part, and fringe. The paintings and prints begin with a base image of a mannequin head. Adams then individualized the portraits by rendering the faces in geometric forms—an iconic visual element of his work—and applying varied skin tones, makeup, and hairstyles that range from classic to more contemporary and imaginative. The final portraits confidently look out at the viewer. Their attitudes are palpable and inarguable. The Style Variations are about being seen. They celebrate rituals of self-expression that do not need to be contextualized to have value, and they champion what Adams calls “one’s individual fantasticness.”
As the Style Variations honor how Black figures individually choose to present themselves, Adams’ largest print project to date, Eye Candy, comments on the media’s tendencies to present Blackness, specifically the Black male body, as something to be consumed. This work continues Adams’ interest in examining American popular culture from a Black perspective, its relationship to consumerism, and the value systems formed around it.
In Eye Candy, six panels repeatedly depict a Black male figure, each time dressed in a different colored set of clothing. A collage element depicting a lollipop covers one eye of the man as he stands at an angle with his hands behind his back as he gazes out at the viewer. Adams created Eye Candy after he came across a small underwear advertisement in an early issue of Ebony Magazine that beckoned to be blown up, embellished, decontextualized, and reintroduced to the world as a figure of desire and consumption.
The source image for the work reflects a man from the civil rights era wearing what Adams has referred to as his “under-armor.” The vibrant garment choices read not only as a variety of colors but also flavors—cherry, orange, lemon, green apple, blueberry, and grape. These bright candy colors reappear behind the prints as a custom wallpaper that Adams also created. The wallpaper depicts the top half of the lollipop that appears in the prints, looking like a giant candy-swirled rainbow. All these candy-colored visual elements emphasize the allure of the figures and support the commentary Adams makes with the artwork. The power of seduction associated with the outward presentation of the Black male body in media confronts the awareness of the politics it inherently embodies—politics placed on it by society’s standards surrounding masculinity.
