Friedman benda opens ‘Who Owns Geometry Anyway?’
Adam Pendleton presents Who Owns Geometry Anyway? at Friedman Benda in New York, where a series of sculptural furniture forms reorients the gallery into a measured field of geometries. Polished stone tables, carved volumes, and sharply defined wall interventions create a spatial environment tuned to material presence. designboom attended the opening to speak with the artist — read the full interview below!
Pendleton frames each piece as a form that activates space, describing the works as creating ‘a very specific feeling and temperature, and sense of both time, space, and material.’ The installation’s low-slung rounds, punctured surfaces, and triangular wall planes make this sensitivity immediately legible.
Visitors encounter shifts between matte and gloss, heavy mass and visual levity, all contributing to what Pendleton characterizes as a heightened awareness of surface, texture, and the experience of moving through a room.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton | photography © Izzy Leung
hyper-specific geometries occupy the stripped-back gallery
The exhibition at Friedman Benda evolved through what artist Adam Pendleton calls a dialogic process, shaped by intuition and precise adjustments. A square became two opposing triangles, while ceramic works planned as singular elements are assembled into grids during installation. Pendleton describes this approach as a ‘confluence of being hyper specific and intuitive,’ a method that allows the objects to shape one another as they settle into place.
Across these forms, material choice governs tempo. Pendleton speaks of the stone pieces as ‘slow’ with a palpable weight, even as they appear almost weightless. This dynamic shows his ongoing interest in forms that resist fixed categorization — objects that hover between sculpture, design, and something still in the process of becoming. Within the stripped-back gallery space of Friedman Benda, Who Owns Geometry Anyway? opens another chapter in Adam Pendleton’s ever-changing dialogue with form and space.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton
a dialogue with adam pendleton
designboom (DB): Could you speak about the scope of the collection? What pieces are involved, and what materials did you use?
Adam Pendleton (AP): In the show, there are seven forms, and I think about them as forms that activate space and can be used in relationship to it. They’re exhibited alongside a light fixture called Drawn, which is, for me, a drawing with light, and then two wall works — the glossy white triangle and the matte black triangle — and four ceramic paintings. All of these works, in relationship to each other, create a very specific feeling and a sense of time, space, and material.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton
DB: What kind of feelings are you hoping to evoke?
AP: I like to create works that heighten people’s attention to space, form, light, surface texture, and weight. We encounter all of those elements all the time, but we aren’t always aware of them. I want to make things that slow us down and encourage awareness. That’s what happens in the exhibition because of how it’s been executed — how the works are placed, and the different surfaces and materials.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton
DB: Could you speak about the process for creating the wall pieces? I’m interested in how you altered the materials to create these effects.
AP: A lot of it was dialogic — an ongoing conversation with the space. I worked with a model and made very slight changes. What became the glossy white triangle was originally a square. You look at it, study it, and realize it should be two triangles going in opposing directions. The ceramic elements were going to be hung individually, but when I began installing them, they became grids. It’s about how you map and read something visual.
DB: So it’s intuitive for you?
AP: It is intuitive, but also hyper specific. It’s a confluence of being hyper specific and intuitive, finding the space where those modes operate in a poetically efficient way.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton
DB: How do these works differ from your past work? Are there new strategies for creating or exploring?
AP: They involve completely different material realities, and material realities are temporal realities. Every material has a tempo or speed. A drawing has a different speed than a painting, and a painting has a different tempo than a sculpture. I like working in all of those registers.
DB: Would you say these pieces evoke more slowness?
AP: They’re slow, yes. They have a kind of weight, but even though they’re heavy, they also feel weightless, which fascinates me.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton
DB: Earlier you mentioned temperature. What type of temperature is being conveyed?
AP: Optics and ideas radiate sensations. Heat and cold are sensations we’re extremely aware of. I’m fascinated by how we always want to touch things when we see them, even when we shouldn’t. We want to feel our body in relationship to things on an intimate level. I’m interested in ideas and objects that propel those visceral thoughts, feelings, and desires.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton
DB: Are there cultural or historical references you’re inspired by currently?
AP: I’ve been reading Deleuze, Maggie Nelson, and thinking through Noguchi, but also someone like Gaetano Pesce — how playful and experimental he is with material and color. These works are also experimental in how they relate to space and create space. They do things improperly — if you think of something as a table, these objects do things tables shouldn’t do. Some objects make you wonder, what is it? I like that in-betweenness, that theoretical space of something perpetually becoming and evolving.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton
DB: Are you more inclined toward messiness or order?
AP: I’m inclined toward balance. I like ideas that don’t make sense and are improbable, which is a kind of chaos. I like taking what is improbable or unlikely and creating a sense around it — creating space for things, ideas, and volumes that are improper or improbable. I want those things to exist in the world. I want to put ideas into the world that are articulate but speak a language that’s unfamiliar.
image courtesy Friedman Benda and Adam Pendleton
project info:
name: Who Owns Geometry Anyway?
artist: Adam Pendleton | @pendleton.adam
gallery: Friedman Benda | @friedman_benda
location: 515 W 26th Street, New York, NY
dates: November 7th — December 19th, 2025
photography: © Izzy Leung | @izzyleung
The post adam pendleton discusses slowness and weight at friedman benda show opening appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.