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POLLY APFELBAUM |
In describing artworks such as Reckless, some writers have used the term “splats.” Polly Apfelbaum calls her work “fallen paintings” and describes Reckless as “sort of like a garbage heap of leftovers. And I wanted it to be as crazy as possible and have no sense of order.“ The title Reckless originated from a BBC television program about an affair between an older woman and a younger man, a reversal of expected tradition that appealed to Apfelbaum. Her artwork is also unexpected—a combination of painting, sculpture, and installation that challenges traditional definitions of media.
Reckless consists of thousands of pieces of synthetic velvet and fabric. Apfelbaum dyed the fabric using squeeze bottles filled with a French dye called Sennelier, and then cut the fabric into smaller pieces. “I love drawing,” said Apfelbaum, “but then I think, how am I going to cut that? I couldn’t let somebody else do it. In cutting, I get to know each detail, and then I can know the next step, because the rules change, during and after.”
Apfelbaum described the composition and installation of Reckless in an audio tour entry for the Gallery. “There is a method to the madness, and there’s not. And there are obviously pieces that I like and pieces that I don’t. And for me it’s…about painting these passages, and things next to each other, and the unexpected. And each time I lay it down it’s different, and I love the ethereal nature of it—the kind of here today, gone tomorrow. It has this kind of sense of entropy, and decay, and the color each time I see it looks a little different and changes. And it has more of this natural/unnatural thing going on. It is really a crazy, insane piece, and you have to go into a sort of place to do it—a kind of zone, I think. There’s a gazillion pieces, and that’s sort of what I like—it’s about this idea of endless possibilities and potential. And things are always changing and creating new and different kinds of possibilities.”
– Mariann Smith, Curator of Education