Polly Apfelbaum
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Works
Polly Apfelbaum
Sun Target - Blue, 2019Woodblock
Fuji DHM-11 Kozo Misumi 536gsm59 3/4 x 59 3/4 inches
(151.8 x 151.8 cm)Edition of 3© Polly Apfelbaum/Durham Press, 2019Literature
In her series Sun Targets, three editions of large-scale woodblock reliefs, Polly Apfelbaum explores the possibilities of the foundational color wheel by applying it to a distilled composition. Both Sun Targets and On Target, an edition produced concurrently, feature precise concentric circles overlaid on a square, though in much different scales with Sun Targets being over four times larger.
In these three monumental prints, Apfelbaum’s chromatic experiments occur outside the circle more so than within it. Eleven rings in a selection of tertiary colors orbit a small, central area of yellow with a light-gray circumference. Inked in a flat, even manner and printed on a hydraulic press, these massive interior woodblocks are a constant across the three works. The artist instead altered the background, juxtaposing the vibrant circle against each of the three primary colors—red, blue, and yellow. These changes to the exterior surroundings drastically alter the overall impact of the images, demonstrating how context and relationship can transform our perceptions.
Produced with such foundational configurations and hues, these new prints are resolutely abstract. At the same time, as with so much the artist’s work, they reference an array of sources, both high and low, that invoke endless associations including scientific illustrations of the cosmos as well as bullseyes that are used in many popular sports. They also engage art history—not only conversing in color theory and with the paintings of such figures as Jasper Johns and Kenneth Noland, but also with Apfelbaum’s larger practice; Sun Targets echo Apfelbaum’s rug works that she created in collaboration with weavers in Mexico, as well as the circular motifs that have recurred throughout her career, from her Wallflowers of the early 1990s to her later “fallen paintings” that expand organically in concentric spirals on the floor. The imagery in Sun Targets was derived from her show Waiting for the UFOs at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. The show featured multiple installations and floor pieces, including three carpets with large targets which would then become the inspiration for this edition.
1of 3Viewing rooms
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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.
