Bellas Artes will present its seventh exhibition of works on paper by Judy Pfaff. Currently on
view in the gallery’s garden is her installation, Jardin de los Cuervos, made in 2000 that
continues to engage visitors.
The artist was born in London, but moved to the US as a child. She received her BFA from
Washington University in 1971 and MFA from Yale in 1973. In 1975 she was invited to
participate in the Whitney Biennial. She exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and
represented the United States at the Sao Paolo Bienal in 1998. She has had more than 100
solo exhibitions and participated in more than 200 group shows. In 2004, Pfaff was named a
MacArthur Fellow. She also has received grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, the
Guggenheim Foundation, and the Nancy Graves Foundation.
Originally a painter, Pfaff, now primarily known as a sculptor, pioneered the art of installation in
the 1970s, opening doors and providing pathways for today’s installation artists. She continues
to create drawings and prints that resonate with the same complexity, motion, and visceral and
psychological immediacy as her large sculptural installations.
Her drawings juxtapose the natural and man made into a seemingly spontaneous cauldron of
order and chaos, bringing forth structured images that invite the viewer to experience a
penetrating physical and emotional environment. She gathers visual information from the world
around her, as well as from books and magazines on physics, medicine, biology, zoology,
astronomy, Western and Eastern religions, among other sources. From these she selects,
weaves together, and improvises a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Her
stream of consciousness approach brings forth freshness and vibrancy, but feels deeply
connected to our cellular memory. Her friend, Irving Sandler - prominent arts writer, critic,
professor, and supporter of emerging artists and spaces - has written in the monograph Judy
Pfaff, “As she views it, one way or another, everything in the universe is linked. The imagery
she collects constitutes a visionary chart or model of universal knowledge.”
He goes on to say, “The complexity that Pfaff values in each piece also extends over time from
work to work. Each issues from a different experience; often inspired by the particular place
she happens to be in, and each expresses a different mood or sensation, reflecting a different
psychological state, ranging from elation to melancholy, from hedonism to pain.”
In Very Recent Work Pfaff will present three-dimensional drawings. These complex, gestural,
and multi-layered works seem like small installations, capturing the energy and pilgrimage of
her larger works. Choreographing the drawings beyond the plane - out into the space of the
gallery - expands Pfaff’s fertile journey of exploring materials and developing new techniques
and visual vocabularies to amplify and share her thought provoking and viscerally engaging
vision of the world.
Today her work may be found in many collections, including those of the Museum of Modern
Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Detroit
Institute of Art.
For further information and photographs, please contact:
Charlotte Kornstein
Tel: 505-983-2745 Fax: 505-983-1271 E-mail: [email protected]
