Curated by Charles Gaines, Adkins’ close friend and frequent collaborator, this exhibition seeks to illuminate a revolutionary oeuvre through fresh eyes, grounded in the conceptual and personal rapport between these two groundbreaking artists. Based in Los Angeles, Gaines has maintained his own art practice since the late 1960s.

Presented on two floors of Lévy Gorvy’s flagship Madison Avenue location, Terry Adkins: The Smooth, The Cut, and The Assembled will be comprised of works spanning over three decades of Adkins’ career (1986–2013), which ended prematurely when he passed away unexpectedly in February 2014 at the age of 59. The exhibition focuses on the formal methods he employed to distill his art down to the very “essence” of his materials, often mining the history of the African diaspora for marginalized forms and figures. By reconsidering and reconfiguring established narratives in his installations and performances, Adkins sought access to a deeper realm of experience: a “spirit world,” as he called it, contained within each object and individual.