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Judy Pfaff in "Romance"
Although she started out as a painter, Judy Pfaff was drawn to materials and sculpture. As she explains, “I found when I was a painter I couldn’t stop and until it was finished another thought didn’t enter. With the sculpture, they go on for months. It tells different kinds of stories…”
The documentary follows Pfaff through the installation of a recent exhibition, one which is driven by sadness and loss, using tree roots, neon tubes, and plaster forms, among others, to explore the worlds of black and white. Pfaff describes how the show came into being after the deaths of several close friends, her mother, and her former teacher and mentor, Al Held.
More information and creditsCredits
Created by: Susan Sollins & Susan Dowling. Executive Producer & Curator: Susan Sollins. Series Producer: Eve-Laure Moros Ortega. Associate Producer: Migs Wright. Associate Curator: Wesley Miller. Production Manager: Alice Bertoni & Nick Ravich. Production Coordinator: Amanda Donnan & Meredith Klein. Consulting Director: Catherine Tatge. Editor: Mark Sutton. Director of Photography: Martial Barrault, Terry Doe, Bob Elfstrom, Mead Hunt, & Joel Shapiro. Additional Photography: Bernd Meiners. Sound: Tom Bergin, Ray Day, Ron Garson, Judy Karp, Gilles Metivier, Roger Phenix, & Merce Williams. Assistant Camera: Craig Feldman, Brian Hwang, Cyril Mulon, & Michael Pruitt-Bruun. Field Producer: Charles Atlas. Production Assistant: Marissa Berrong, Kam Stocks, & Daniel Swann. Additional Animation: Shawn Dunbar.
Creative Consultant: Ed Sherin. Art Direction & Design: Open, New York. On-Line Editor: Don Wyllie. Composer: Peter Foley. Voice-Over Artist: Jace Alexander. Sound Editing: Margaret Crimmins & Greg Smith. Sound Mix: Cory Melious & Tony Volante. Animation Stand: Frank Ferrigno. Assistant Editor: Ahmed Amer, Jennifer Chiurco, & George Panos.
Artworks Courtesy of: Pierre Huyghe; Judy Pfaff; Lari Pittman; Laurie Simmons; Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, New York; Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York; Double Wide Media; Gladstone Gallery, New York; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris; Performa 05; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Salon 94, New York; & Sperone Westwater, New York. Archival Footage Courtesy of: Judy Pfaff Studio.
Special Thanks: Lisa Albaugh; Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation; The Art21 Board of Trustees; Atle Gerhardsen, Berlin; Catherine Belloy; Tanya Brodsky; Bettina Bruning; Shawn Caley Regen; Karina Daskalov; Dog Bark Sound; Bridget Donahue; Roy Dowell; Sophie Dufour; Jeanne Englert; Don Faller; Ruth Findlay; Frame:Runner NYC; Maike Fries; Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn; Industria Studios, New York; Meredith Klein; Rose Lord; Sheila Lynch; Anna Miller; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Adam Ottavi-Schiesl; Karen Polack; Paul Power; Thomas Quigley; Andre Ribuoli; Donald Rosenfeld; Sound Lounge; Fabienne Stephan; Meryl Streep; Tate Modern, London; Rob van Erve; Dawson Weber; Chris Webster; Kori Wilson; & James Yohe.
Director of Education & Public Programs: Tana Hargest. Education Consultant: Jessica Hamlin. Manager of Public Programs & Outreach: Kelly Shindler. Web Producer: Ana Otero. Senior Development Officer: Beth Allen. Development Associate: Sara Simonson. Development Coordinator: Erin Cesta & Katherine Payne.
Interns: Stephanie Abraitis, Alex Agnant, Gabriella della Croce, Nora Herting, Milena Hoegsberg, Rives Kitchell, Katie McCurry, Simone Otenaike, Karoline Pfeiffer, Nick Pozek, Carolina Puente, Muña Qamar, Bettina Riccio Henry, Meg Scally, Karen Seapker, Peter Sebeckis, Lucy Strong, & Kelly Williamson.
Public Relations: Goodman Media International. Station Relations: De Shields Associates, Inc. Legal Counsel: Albert Gottesman. Bookkeeper: Marea Alverio-Chaveco & Valerie Riley. Travel Agent: Lita Gottesman.
Major underwriting for Season 4 of Art in the Twenty-First Century is provided by National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Bloomberg, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Bagley Wright Fund, and W.L.S. Spencer Foundation.
Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian
Through the Art21 Translation Project, multilingual audiences from around the globe can contribute translations, making Art21 films more accessible worldwide.
Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.
Balancing intense planning with improvisational decision-making, Judy Pfaff creates exuberant, sprawling sculptures and installations that weave landscape, architecture, and color into a tense yet organic whole. 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. 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.
“Making sculpture, which was light, sculpture which was transparent, sculpture which was illusionistic, sculpture which you couldn’t take home and put in your living room…
It wasn’t one thing, it was really like a set of experiences or a set of experiments that suggested a larger context.”
Judy Pfaff
Artist at Work
