Adam Pendleton

Andy Sachs returns to Runway as Miranda Priestly navigates a new media landscape and Runway's position within. The duo reconnect with former assistant Emily Charlton, now the head of a luxury brand that possesses funding which could ensure Runway's survival.

Seven up-and-coming artists create original pieces that explore social issues for the chance to win $100,000 and show their work at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in this competition series judged by art-world insiders.

“How do you make sense on an emotional, intellectual, and pragmatic level of the visual residue one leaves behind?” This is a pivotal question for Adam Pendleton’s recent abstract paintings on view here, which involve a process of accumulation in which the surface of the canvas teems with sweeping gestures, language, drips, splatters, and moments of erasure in a reflection of how we evolve in life. Pendleton has explained that these works “verge on the monumental; they can take months to make and capture a deep history of marks and impressions. Minor moments become major moments because of how they articulate who we are or who we might be at any given moment. It’s a visual poetics of disruption.” These paintings, Pendleton has suggested, ask: “how do you leverage, subvert, and deploy your subjectivity? We all are doing it all of the time. It becomes more interesting when we’re aware that we’re doing it.”

Pendleton’s video piece focuses on the life of choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator Ishmael Houston-Jones.