JUDY PFAFF

Constructed Paper

May 15 – August 15, 2009

Judy Pfaff’s exhibition, Constructed Paper, comprises recent large-scale low-relief cut paper constructions. Some are as large as eight feet by eight feet. These collage-like pieces create their own worlds, as if to compress the room-sized installations for which she is best known into depths of about five inches. Although her work defies literal interpretation, many of the constructions seem to reflect upon the natural world in all its beauty and terrifying instability. The exhibition also includes elaborate prints created at Tandem Press at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Born in London in 1946, Pfaff lives and works in New York City and the mid-Hudson Valley. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters this year. She is the Richard B. Fisher Professor of the Arts, Milton Avery Distinguished Professor of Art and co-director, studio program at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. Her work is included in many collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The High Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo. One of her sculptures can be viewed currently at the Cincinnati Art Museum in the gallery devoted to contemporary art.