BOMB 119/Spring 2012
Click here to read a transcript of this conversation.
This BOMBlive was co-produced by Art21.
Click here to watch a larger version of this video!
A pioneer of installation art in the 1970s, Judy 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. Her work is a complex ordering of visual information composed of steel, fiberglass, and plaster as well as salvaged signage and natural elements such as tree roots. She has extended her interest in natural motifs in a series of prints integrating vegetation, maps, and medical illustrations, and has developed her dramatic sculptural materials into set designs for several theatrical stage productions.
Judy Pfaff was the subject of the episode “Romance,” part of Season 4 of the PBS documentary series Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century. In this web exclusive video interview, filmed after the episode was screened at the New York Public Library, BOMB’s editor in chief Betsy Sussler talks with the artist about her work.
Watch BOMB’s web-exclusive conversation between Judy Pfaff and Betsy Sussler.
Photography: Nick Ravich
Sound: Phil Shipman
Editing: Courtney Nicolson & Lucy Raven
Visit the Art:21 website for more of Judy’s work
(BOMBLive!, Interview, Sculpture, Installation, Video)