Polly Apfelbaum: Off Colour
10 September - 23 October 2010
D'Amelio Terras, New York

The abstraction of space & cartoon

On 10 September 2010, the New York gallery D'Amelio Terras opened the exhibition 'Polly Apfelbaum: Off Colour'. US artist Polly Apfelbaum is mentioned together with Kiki Smith, Tracey Moffatt, Lorna Simpson... when it comes to feminist art. Her aesthetical approach can be compared to pop artists like Kiki Kogelnik. In Apfelbaum's work, textiles are a central medium for interactive 'layings' which are developed by the artist in performance-a-like installations.

At D'Amelio Terras, Polly Apfelbaum arranges stretch fabrics - which she has cut and dyed before, as a floor-based installation in the space of the gallery's architecture.  "...this temporal installation is "situational," being born of and only able to exist within the physical space of its original conceptualization."  Additionally to the temporarily aspect of the art work, Polly Apfelbaum intensifies with her floor-based installation the visitor's experience of space.

Video: Artist Polly Apfelbaum speaks about her work, why she likes the idea of strong female superheros, etc., while she installs 'Blossom' (2000) for the exhibition 'Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making', which ran from 4 March to 11 June 2007 at MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In June 2010, Polly Apfelbaum contributed images (like from the installation 'Blossom', which you can see in the video below), to the new Google feature 'background'.

For the exhibition at MoMA, she was inspired by the animated cartoon 'The Powerpuff Girls'. 'Blossom' is an abstract portrait of one of the Powerpuff Girls. Blossom is a superhero who saves the world from evil. Polly Apfelbaum said about her cartoon-abstraction, "I liked the idea of a strong somewhat promiscuous female role model, the slightly out-of-control quality of these cartoon characters." MoMa

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