Derrick Adams: Interior Life (2019) was an exhibition of new works by the artist presented by Luxembourg & Dayan and curated by Francesco Bonami. Inspired by a tenet of Catholic theology that describes “a life which seeks God in everything,” Interior Life was a mediation on the intimate spaces of one’s mind and home, each an analog for the other. The exhibition included new portraits on paper from the artist’s ongoing Deconstruction Worker series, installed on custom wallpaper depicting imaginary domestic environments.

Adams advanced his artistic mission to devise spaces for his figures with a sophisticated and highly personalized architectural vocabulary. Fundamental architectural processes and presentation strategies are significant to his work: floor plans, elevations, sections, renderings, and construction all perform developmental states in what he has described as “non-traditional aerial landscape portraits.” His Deconstruction Worker series consists of deftly collaged, kaleidoscopically geometric human figures that appear to live in concurrent states of atomization and coalescence. His angular constructed images of urban dwellers and the worlds that surround, shape, and reflect their daily lives suggest that our created physical environments are replete with the invisible force of the soul.