On September 7, Nancy Hoffman Gallery opens Harvest, an exhibition of some 50 newly created terra-cotta sculptures by Judy Fox, made in her studio in Rhinebeck, New York. The sculptures depict fruits and vegetables, dynamic in form and palette, a veritable organic feast. Ranging in size from 30 inches to 3 inches, the works are painted in exquisite detail with casein paint. The exhibition is on view through October 21.
Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, September 7 from 6 to 8pm. Judy Fox’s recent work emerged amid isolation in the lush rural environment of the Hudson Valley. She moved to Rhinebeck in 2020, after 40 years living in New York City, prompted by COVID-19. The pandemic—a collective experience that has confronted us with the perils of disease, age, and dissociation—also informed Fox’s direction for this new body of work. Vulnerability emanates from the carefully crafted surface of each piece.
Harvest continues a migration from the painted figures that launched Fox’s sculpture practice in the 1980s. The installation presents a new set of biomorphic sculptures, now no longer orbiting a human character. Instead, a deep understanding of the body animates plant-based subjects.
Explains Nancy Hoffman, “The installation invites viewers to a sculptural banquet of sensualized fruits and veggies with wonderful deformities, displayed on long platforms. They are quite true to life.”
Continues Judy Fox, “Farm produce is cultivated to look tasty and robust. But these subjects are marred in ways that resonate with the viewer. Some are misshapen or diseased. Some are reminiscent of body parts, gestures, or cartoons. Appetite and anxiety are integrated, with humor.”
For example, Bad Apple, Conjoined Squash, Polydactyl Radish, and Devil’s Hand Mushroom (all 2023) reveal their imperfections and the artist’s droll diagnosis of their conditions. The works draw on Fox’s keen knowledge of the body to express themselves. A series of 15 Potato Heads are studies in facial expressions and mood.
As in earlier surrealist work, Fox’s fruits and vegetables are shaped by the fundaments of life. Their carved flesh dramatizes processes that animate and threaten all bodies, including our own: fertility, growth, overgrowth, malformation, violence, disease, and the persistence of beauty.
About Judy Fox: Judy Fox is a sculptor who works in the Hudson Valley, with a studio in Rhinebeck, New York. As an undergraduate she studied sculpture at Yale (BA 1978) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She received advanced degrees in Art History (MA 1983) and Conservation (1985) from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (NYU).
Fox has participated in numerous exhibitions around the U.S. and Europe. A fellow of both Yaddo and MacDowell residencies, she has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the “Anonymous Was a Woman” Foundation, the National Academy of Design, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has had solo exhibitions at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; and Kunsthalle im Pallazo, Liestal, Switzerland. She has been the subject of many reviews and articles, including features in Art in America (2000), Artnet (2007), Sculpture Review (2010), O Magazine (2012), Ceramics: Art and Perception (2013), New Ceramics (2015), and Artforum (2019). Her work has been featured in several books, including David Ebony et al, Curve/The Female Nude Now (2003), Veronica Gunter, 500 Figures in Clay (2004), the Dutch publication Het Grote Boek 2 (2017), Judith Schwartz, Confrontational Ceramics (2008), and Cristina Cordova, The Figure in Clay (2022). She contributed essays to The Figure: Painting, Drawing and Sculpture: Contemporary Perspectives (Rizzoli 2014).
Fox has been a speaker and visiting artist at various institutions and conferences in the U.S. and abroad. She is a Senior Critic and professor at the New York Academy of Art.
