Auction details
Summer Fine Art Auction
offered by
924 ne 20th ave
Ft. Lauderdale., FL 33304 
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An artist of wide-ranging styles from Pop Art to Minimalism, Polly Apfelbaum has been exhibiting in New York since the early 1980s. Many of her installations are dyed fabric laid on the floor, wall works with strips of velvet applied to bed sheets or collages of cut-up photographs and cloth. Her subjects deal with the relativity of time, feminist issues, and complexity in what appears to be simplicity. Disrespectful in a refreshing way, Polly Apfelbaum mixes brilliant gestures of abstract expressionism with the conceptual severity of minimalism, to transform them into their opposites. Color is the key element in Polly Apfelbaum's work, both visually and structurally. Her floorbound installations - which incorporate hundreds of pieces of velvet, hand-dyed in bold hues and often arranged in sprawling configurations that appear to be organically inspired - defy categories of art-making. Like abstract paintings that melted off the wall and formed vibrant puddles, her arrangements of irregularly shaped rounds, diamonds and ovals coalesce with the physical presence of sculpture, while maintaining painting's sense of vibrancy. Her series of prints revisit Warholian flower iconography that she has referenced in previous works. Apfelbaum produces flowers with her own hand, allowing gesture and accident to take their places within the works. Each flower is influenced by its neighbour's scale and tone, the whole image is then reproduced as a unique monoprint. Apfelbaum's concept encompasses so much more than smooth fabrics, handiwork and delicacy. Her works are not only sensual, sexual and sly, but also begets intelligence and strength. It means pushing the boundaries of one's position and being-or at least trying to be-all things to all people. To convey these ideas successfully, Apfelbaum indiscriminately pulls from, questions and builds on the traditions of postwar abstraction: the drippings of Pollock, the stained effects of Frankenthaler, the repetition and serialization of minimalism. Apfelbaum tears down the modalities of media. The work is minimalist; it's cold and manufactured. But the flower shapes provide the organic element that makes the material warm, the shapely curves prominent making the piece playful and sexy. This balancing of the playful and the serious is a big part of what makes Apfelbaum's work so interesting. The seriousness comes from her technical skill, the careful choice of materials, and her arrangement of parts to create a comprehensive whole with many meanings. The playfulness often comes from the shapes she chooses and punning titles. PLEASE NOTE: * THIS AUCTION STARTS ON SUNDAY JULY 19, 2009 AT 11:30 A.M. EST. ImagesClick on thumbnails to see larger images:
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