21c Museum and Kentucky School of Art Present Artist Talk with Judy Pfaff
Monday, May 17, 2010, 6:00pm
in the Atrium Gallery
Meet and greet to follow lecture
Free and open to the public
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. Pfaff's site-specific installations
pierce through walls and careen through the air, achieving lightness and explosive
energy. Balancing intense planning with improvisational decision-making, Pfaff creates
exuberant, sprawling sculptures and installations that weave landscape, architecture,
and color into a tense yet organic whole.
A graduate of Yale University in 1973, Judy Pfaff has received many awards, including
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (2004), the National Endowment
for the Arts award (1986), and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation (1983). She has had major exhibitions at the Elvehjem Museum of Art,
University of Wisconsin, Madison (2002), Denver Art Museum (1994), and St. Louis
Art Museum (1989). Pfaff represented the United States in the 1998 Sao Paolo Biennial,
she currently lives and works in Kingston and Tivoli, New York and is currently
the cochair of the art department at Bard College.