JUDY PFAFF. ABSTRACT POETRY
The first European solo show of Judy Pfaff is opening on May 27th at the gallery AICA | Andrea Ingenito Contemporary Art in Capri. British by birth but American by adoption – she moved to the United States very young -, the artist comes back to the Old Continent with the exhibition “Judy Pfaff. Abstract Poetry” which displays until July 2nd a large group of works on paper – mixed media created with tempera, collage, layers of sheets, photographs, archival documents – of small, medium and big dimension.
34 abstract works, result of the assembly of figurative elements, are set up in the gallery spaces like cells of a small installation: the individual works are placed in dialogue with each other, gathered in groups on the basis of a thematic affinity, of sense, of material, of aesthetic result.
The papers on display appear as the result of a treasure hunt: apparently disorderly elements are supported by dense connections; tapestries generated by a texture made of numerous objects merge and overlap with delicate layers of old papers and documents found in old drawers, or images downloaded from the Internet, or even pictures of flowers, landscapes, travel, typical moments of street life.
The feeling for the visitor is to find himself in an archive, completely submerged in a poetic, even if chaotic, inventory.
Judy Pfaff has been a pioneer of the art of the ’70s. Able to create a new narrative language to explore the intersection between the real and the abstract, she never take a position in the debate between realism and abstraction, choosing to define herself simply “anti-minimalist”.
The whole resulting from her work is full, loaded, exuberant; the used colors, intense and strong, are never violent or excessive. The assembly process, which seems to be improvised – as if the artist was a composer of jazz music – is actually dictated by a deep concern about the underlying structure on which the delicate balance between the impulse to the deconstruction and the post minimalism is built.
Every object she puts her hands on is ready to be re-invented: the core of the activity of Judy Pfaff is the proliferation itself.
A selection of the works of Pfaff is moreover exhibited with some works of Giosetta Fioroni at the stand of the gallery AICA | Andrea Ingenito Contemporary Art during Art New York from May 3rd through May 7th.
Brief Bio
She was born in London in 1946, at the age of ten she moved to the USA. Pfaff attended the Wayne State University and the Southern Illinois University, She received a BFA from Washington University, Saint Louis in 1971 and an MFA from Yale University in 1973. A pioneer of installation art in the 1970s, Pfaff synthesizes sculpture, painting, and architecture into dynamic environments in which space seems to expand and collapse, fluctuating between the two- and three-dimensional. In 2009 Pfaff was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has received many awards, including a USA Fellowship (2009); Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Fellowship (2006); John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (2004); Nancy Graves Foundation Grant (2003); Bessie (1984); and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1983) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1986). She has had major exhibitions at the Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison (2002); Denver Art Museum (1994); St. Louis Art Museum (1989); and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (1982). Pfaff represented the United States in the 1998 São Paolo Bienal. Pfaff lives and works in Kingston and Tivoli, New York.
Useful Information
Title Judy Pfaff. Abstract Poetry
Location AICA | Andrea Ingenito Contemporary Art | Via Le Botteghe 56, Capri
Date May 28 – July 2 2017
Opening Saturday May 27, 6.30 pm
Opening hours from Tuesday to Sunday, h. 6.00 – 10.30 p.m.
Free admission
Info 348.6003820 | segreteria@ai-ca.com | www.ai-ca.com
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