Polly Apfelbaum biography

back to new works by apfelbaum

polly apfelbaum

Born in Abington, Pennsylvania, 1955
Studied at Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania and SUNY Purchase College, Purchase, New York Lives and works in New York City

Polly Apfelbaum is known for her "fallen paintings", works that exist in a contentious space between painting, sculpture, and installation. Apfelbaum's overall forms, often arranged on the floor, are comprised of intricate layers of dyed fabric, spreading around corners in indeterminate shapes, as if smaller paintings have spontaneously grown from a central cluster of shapes and colors. Her interests range from popular culture, feminism, and the legacy of postwar abstract painting. Apfelbaum tackles these substantial topics with a subtle wit and a generous sense of play.

Selected Recent Exhibitions
2008 Green Thoughts in a Green Shade, Art OMI Sculpture Fields, Ghent, New York
Hair of the Dog, Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Flower Power: A Subversive Botanical, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Revision, Reiteration, Recombination: Process and the contemporary print, University of Florida in Orlando, Orlando, Florida

2007 Basic Divisions, Lab Grant, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, New York
Lovecraft, Solvent Space, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia
Pink, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai, India
Comic Abstraction: Image Breaking, Image Making, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

2006 Contemporary Masterworks: St. Louis Collects, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri
Cartoon Garden, D'Amelio Terras, New York, New York
Selections from the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies-Columbia University, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, New York

2005 Cartoon Garden, D'Amelio Terras, New York, New York
Good and Plenty, Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, Vienna, Austria
Extreme Abstraction, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
The Shape of Colour: Excursions in Colour Field, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada

2004 Crazy Love, Love Crazy, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
Soft Edge, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
Optima, Ballroom, Marfa, Texas
Celebrating Sculpture: Modern and Contemporary Works from Dallas Collections, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
Splat, Boom, Pow: The Influence of Comics in Contemporary Art, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas

Selected Public Collections
Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Austin Museum of Art, Austin, Texas
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden
Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut