Polly Apfelbaum
-
Works
Polly Apfelbaum
On Target, 2019Portfolio of Six Woodblock Prints
Fuji DHM-11 Kozo Misumi, White 536gsm25 x 25 inches
(63.5 x 63.5 cm)Edition of 25© Polly Apfelbaum/Durham Press, 2019Further images
Literature
In her edition On Target with Durham Press, Polly Apfelbaum has seized upon the graphic power of fundamental geometric shapes, creating distilled compositions that explore the possibilities of elemental color schemes. Printed as woodblock reliefs, On Target features precise concentric circles overlaid on a square inked in an expanded chromatic scale developed specifically for Apfelbaum’s work. This portfolio was created alongside Sun Targets, editions which feature the same target motif but of a very different scale at over four times the size.
On Target is comprised of six works, each presented on twenty-five inch squared handmade Japanese paper. The entire portfolio was produced with the same eight woodblocks, the largest of which – the square background – appears the same shade of deep midnight blue across the suite. Rendered with crisp lines and flat colors, the prints are precise and clear but far from mechanical; the paper’s varied texture and rough edges lend them a decidedly human touch. Within the circles, Apfelbaum takes the viewer on short walks around the color wheel, moving through it in measured, clockwise or counterclockwise steps. Depending on whether the eye travels inward or outward, the works provide contrasting impressions of form and movement. They seem to be concave or convex, to expand or contract, or to lead us on a journey of descent or ascent—like Divine Comedy in polychrome.
The chromatic scale developed for Apfelbaum extends the complete color spectrum by expanding each color into five different hues. Each hue has an equal change between them, included between the colors themselves to create a looping gradation of colors. The six prints are linked by this scale within its outer five rings – the first print moves from green to orange, with the second print starting its outer ring with the same orange the first finished with, a pattern that continues throughout the prints. This systematic use of color creates a portfolio of prints that at first appear disparate in color but are in fact inherently tied together.
On Target is an edition of 25 and is available directly through Durham Press. For more information about this new series or Apfelbaum’s many other prints, please contact us at sales@durhampress.com..
1of 7Viewing rooms
-
Polly Apfelbaum | Solar Eclipse - Stripe for Stripe - Rainbow Monoprints
2008 - 2024 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Barn Star monoprints
2022 - 2023 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Heart and Soul – There Are Many Hearts
2020 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Targets
2019 – 2020 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Hudson River Valley Nirvana
2016 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Love Series
Come see how Polly Apfelbaum's celebrated prints were inspired and produced over two decades and launched the ambitious collaborations between Polly Apfelbaum and Durham Press, including several limited edition print projects. -
Polly Apfelbaum | Color Exercises
2002 -
Polly Apfelbaum | Three Flowers
2004
BiographyPolly Apfelbaum | Working on Love Park 9 Woodblock Mono Print 2006B. 1955, PHILADELPHIA, PA
New York based artist Polly Apfelbaum has been showing consistently in the US and abroad since the 1980s. She has been making prints with Durham Press since 2002 and exhibited a survey of that work in the 2017 exhibit Chromatic Scale: Prints by Polly Apfelbaum at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.
Solo exhibitions include Alexander Gray, New York (2017); Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2016); Bepart, Waregem, Belgium (2014); Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA (2014); Electric Zinia Factory, Germany (2014); lumber room, Portland, OR (2014); Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai, India (2013). T-Space, Milan, NY, (2012); Galerie Nachst St. Stephan, Vienna, (2012); D’Amelio Gallery, New York, (2012); Carlow Visual Center for Contemporary Art, Carlow, Ireland, (2009); and Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK, (2009); Frith Street Gallery, London, (2007). A major mid-career survey of her work opened in 2003 at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, PA and traveled to Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (2004).
Her work has been featured in important group exhibitions including Abstranded: Fiber and Abstraction in Contemporary Art, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2021); Pattern II, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel, Switzerland (2020); Maneuver, Hunter College, New York, New York (2019); An Irruption of the Rainbow, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Wall to Wall, MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland, OH (2016); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA (2015); Three Graces, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2015); Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today, Museum of Art and Design, New York (2015); AMERICANA: Formalizing Craft, Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL (2013); Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (2012); Lines, Grids, Stains, and Words (2008), Comic Abstraction (2007), and Sense and Sensibility: Women and Minimalism in the 90’s (1994) all at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Extreme Abstraction, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, (2005); As Painting: Division and Displacement, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, (2002); Operativo, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, (2001).
Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of Art of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; The Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; and the Perez Museum, Miami.
She was the recipient of a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant in 1987, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993, an Artist’s Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1995, an Anonymous Was a Women Award in 1998, a Richard Diebenkorn Fellowship in 1999, a Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 1999, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2002, and the Rome Prize in 2012.
Apfelbaum is represented by Frith Street Gallery in London.
