FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUDY RIFKA: A GLANCE THROUGH THE REARVIEW MIRROR
AN ASSESSMENT OF HER FORMIDABLE ART: 1974 – present
CURATED BY GREGORY DE LA HABA
PULPO GALLERY Murnau, 24 September – 31 October 2021
Opening Reception: Friday, 24 September, 2021
Press Dinner: Friday, October 8, 2021
PULPO GALLERY is pleased to announce JUDY RIFKA: A GLANCE THROUGH THE REARVIEW MIRROR, on view from September 24 through October 31, 2021. An opening reception will be held on Friday, September 24, 2021 from 5:00 pm to 9:30 pm. A press dinner will take place on Friday, October 8, 2021 from 7:00 pm to 10:30 pm. Visitors are kindly asked to RSVP to visit@pulpogallery.com.
A Glance through the Rearview Mirror marks the first retrospective of Judy Rifka’s five decade long career in Europe. The exhibition will present paintings spanning the artists entire career from 1974 until today.
Judy Rifka, Single Shape - 3, 1978
“The trick is to make it appear that the innovator ripped it off from you. A good example of this principle is the case of Judy Rifka’s work at the debut of the 70’s. Her Single Shapes on plywood are among the most important paintings of the decade.” - Rene Ricard, Dec 1981, "The Radiant Child", ArtForum
A restless spirit with a postmodernist, punk-like soul, Rifka set forth as an artist during the heyday of the Age of Aquarius, the hippie generation in the midst of Vietnam and political chaos. Her pro-action mindset in such an environment allowed Rifka to explore love and art simultaneously, whether traveling around or living on a Navajo Reservation in New Mexico to better understand space in a vast area, Judy Rifka was passionately and assuredly building on her constructivist mindset for the paintings that would eventually put her on the map in the mid 1970’s: her Single Shapes on plywood.
In his essay for the exhibition, the American curator Gregory de la Haba writes: “Rifka aims to capture line and forms positing in space as well its trajectory in space and its concomitant wake reverberating outward and within the four-walled holding cell —the 4'x4’ plywood panel used mostoften for these single shapepaintings. Thesesimple yet majestic forms are allowed to ‘dance’, she says, on the panel and by way of layering and building-up of handmade paint they slowly and painstakingly emerge as ‘morphing fields’, a body-form that ricochets within and without and builds momentum, a centrifugal-like force that emanates off the picture plane and exists markedly, agelessly, in the face of Postmoderism’s gaze. This movement dictates direction and hence allows the form to dictate design, starts designing itself, and trajects forward.“
Judy Rifka was born in New York City in 1945. Having been an integral part of the 70’s and 80’s downtown scene of New York City, her works featured in the 1975 and 1983 Whitney Biennials as well as Documenta VII in Kassel.
Judy Rifka and her son at the studio, 1978. (c) Judy Rifka and PULPO GALLERY
Her career spans over fifty solo shows and countless group exhibitions; her work can be seen in numerous public collections throughout the
United States and Europe and has been featured in major exhibitions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Carnegie Mellon University; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; The Brooklyn Museum; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; Laforet Museum, Tokyo; Kunst Rai, Amsterdam; Mint Museum, Charlotte; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; The Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.
Rifka has been widely written about, and featured in, among other places, Art Forum, Art in America, Kunstforum, Tema Celeste, Flash Art, The New Yorker, Elle and New York Magazine.
An extensive Media Kit can be found on our website at:
https://www.pulpogallery.com/press/9-media-kit-judy-rifka-a-glance-through/
PRESS CONTACT UNITED STATES
Gregory de la Haba
gregory@pulpogallery.com
+1 (917) 670 1148
PRESS CONTACT REST OF WORLD
Katherina Zeifang
katherina@pulpogallery.com
+49 171 1778796
