This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
It is hard to fathom that “A Walk in the Park” at Johnson Lowe Gallery through June 28 is Judy Pfaff’s first exhibition in Atlanta. The show rewards those who have been waiting decades for an exhibition of the work of an artist who first came to prominence in the mid-1970s.
Pfaff’s large-scale sculptural relief “Apples and Oranges” (1986) was acquired in 1989 by the High Museum of Art for its permanent collection; it is currently on view there. In this relief sculpture, Pfaff uses found objects in a robust and provocative play on the still life that reflects both her acerbic wit and her Pop Art sensibility. This colossal work visually bounces off the wall and spills plastic laminates, painted steel and wood into the viewer’s space.
Almost 40 years later, Pfaff is still using found and constructed objects to create sculptures in fluorescent hues and intense primary colors that create their own world and produce a dazzling effect. Although Pfaff’s new works still radiate artificial colors, they also include new elements such as LED lights and plastic resins. The poignancy of Pfaff’s work lies in the way her use of obviously synthetic mediums and colors in sculptural combines somehow still evokes nature and the environment.
Before you enter the gallery, you see “Untitled (Africa)” (2023) through an external gallery window. This work is a large relief whose main form is a found object that looks at first glance like a patterned woven carpet in the shape of the African continent. This object is actually made of plastic threads woven into a pattern whose surface emulates a rug. The sculpture’s appendages include a stripped bare umbrella frame, an undulating line of LED lights that change color and Pfaff’s signature metal circles. Each disc is painted, whether with a pastiche of brickwork or flat primary colors.
“Untitled (Africa)” ruptures the form of the continent with lime green light that comes from behind, casting radiance from the work. Pfaff is playing a game with the viewer. The work is content ridden and yet abstract. The personal logic in the work is inscrutable, but the vocabulary of colors, shapes and forms nevertheless gives the work its verve.
The exhibition’s signature work is the five-panel “A Walk in the Park” (2023). The title proclaims that the work is easy, a joy to produce. This seeming effortlessness is an illusion that belies the artist’s lifelong commitment to developing a distinctive visual vocabulary in works that command a unique physical presence. These vertical panels of acrylic and poured resin burst with appendages that grow out of the tops of panels one, two, three and six. In panels four and five, the objects cascade to the ground like waterfalls but land on small shelves attached to the works. The tinted acrylic resin that stains and flows on the panels in contrasting opaque geometric shapes lends great depth to the work. In panel two, there are myriad differently hued small squares that dance from the middle of the panel to the bottom. In this panel, Pfaff’s signature circles are dimensional spheres that actually leave the confines of the acrylic rectangle like heady organic outgrowths.
Credit: Courtesy of Johnson Lowe Gallery
Credit: Courtesy of Johnson Lowe Gallery
There is one room at the gallery where the works in sculptural relief are all attached to the wall. These works from 2021 have a circular structure that resembles either nests or bouquets of flowers, depending on the work. The artificiality of the elements in these sculptures that nevertheless evoke nature is provocative in all the best ways.
“Fangtooth” (2021) is hung on the wall as a sort of offering in a palette of fluorescent oranges. The way Pfaff uses resins makes the elements light and flowing; the work contains a surprise in the form of a dried gourd nestled inside its layers. The balance between the natural and the artificial constitute a complete statement that encompasses both visual beauty and content.
“Michael” (2021) is a framework of 28 black and white drawings of sunflowers in close-up view (the title is a nod to Pfaffs’s artist friend Michael David, whose work is also on view at Johnson Lowe). Each panel is a different rumination on the inside of the flower.
“An Unfinishable” (2024) is a larger group of drawings that spans two walls. These drawings are made in color media, a deep, flowing grid of the flower and the circle: nature and geometry all at once.
It is worth venturing into the back room of the gallery, where “Leaving Nothing” (2021) sits among the racks of stored artwork. This work is a fully dimensional sculpture composed of a mountain of the materials and found objects that Pfaff has used in her work on a cart with wheels. Everything is piled together, and an LED rope below changes color. This is the most emotionally charged work in the exhibition; it evokes the shopping carts that contain unhoused persons’ entire lives. The beauty of this sculpture, and the way it raises questions about what we have and do not have and what we can take with us and what we must leave behind, are overwhelming.
ART REVIEW
“A Walk in the Park”
At Johnson Lowe Gallery through June 28. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 11a.m.-5:30 p.m. Saturdays. Free. 764 Miami Circle, Suite 210, Atlanta. 404-352-8114, johnsonlowe.com
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Deanna Sirlin is an artist and writer. She is known internationally for large-scale installations that have covered the sides of buildings from Atlanta to Venice, Italy. Her book, “She’s Got What It Takes: American Women Artists in Dialogue” (2013), is a critical yet intimate look at the lives and work of nine noted American women artists who have been personally important to Sirlin, based on conversations with each one.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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