The Pfaff Diaspora: ‘Beyond the Canvas’ at Art Cake
A new exhibition featuring Judy Pfaff’s vibrant, boundary-bending wall installations and the compelling recent work of her former students, Suzan Shutan, Sylvia Schwartz and Chere Krakovsky, highlights their shared dedication to pushing aesthetic conventions and creating immersive, sensory experiences that reimagine the viewer’s relationship with art.
To read my article, click here: The Pfaff Diaspora: ‘Beyond the Canvas’ at Art Cake
By Stephen Wozniak February 21, 2025
Beyond the Canvas: Touch, Trace, Tangle
Art Cake
214 40th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11232
Telephone: 410-591-6188
Email address: info@artcake.org
Gallery hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6 p.m.
EXCERPT
While it’s certainly not storming outside, a quick look through the window reveals a fluffy layer of quieting snow across the sidewalk, reminding me that winter is truly here in New York City. Thank goodness I’m on the inside. As I stand in the depths of Art Cake’s warm rear gallery, a colored course of neon blood flow passes from a twisted aortal glass tube and spreads along the back wall in one of artist Judy Pfaff’s larger untitled works. If I were cold and tired upon entry, this nearly kinetic, almost undulating and utterly fascinating new sculpture certainly wakes my spirit, raises my temperature and places me into the pulse of the present. The push and pull of the flower-patterned folding fibers that billow from the piece into my shared space is like a tapestry tornado, something I can imagine ripping through the countryside and shattering building blocks everywhere along its path. A gaggle of small red, yellow and black painted circles appear to roll down the hilly upper left corner of the work, while to the right, neatly ordered yellow, black and white circles suspended on the wall—featuring cartoon brickwork patterns—reiterate such cellular forms. Two suspended black umbrella frames with their canopies shorn free tell me that the winds—of proverbial change or even climate change—have obliterated our meager efforts to ward off the storm and stay upright on paths ahead. Maybe it’s an analogy about the troubled times we live in and must bear. It is an extraordinary work, if enough time is spent with it to reach the delightful, daunting and unexpected realms of viewer experience it offers.