Gravity! It's very dependable

Bubbles, 2000

synthetic velvet, dye

936 parts, 400 cm in diameter

see more here.
also ... here

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Interview from ...

Polly Apfelbaum
"I think of myself as irreverent"
Interview in Pepper Jones Coffeebar, New York, April 2001
Nina Zimmer

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Nina Zimmer

Let's begin with some technical questions. What type of fabric do you use for your floor pieces, and what are the reasons for your choice?

Polly Apfelbaum

First of all it is completely synthetic. 100% acrylic, filled with chemicals, totally artificial. I use different kinds, depending on the light quality I want. Sometimes it will be crushed stretched velvet, or sometimes a flatter nap. When lam doing work on the wall, I use the reverse. I use something natural, like cotton, to work against the artificiality.

NZ Where do you get them?

PA It started with remnants I would get from the fashion industry. It's something that happens as a result of New York being a center of fashion. I'm just picking up the remnants from high fashion.

NZ And how do you dye the fabric?

PA The dyes are liquid, and I use them straight from the bottle, dripped or in squeeze tubes. It's a simple process – nothing complex or technical about it.

NZ Is it difficult to control the color result in the dying process?

PA Well, I like the bleeding of the color, the fact that it's out-of-control. It's more organic that way, letting the colors flow into one another. It's never completely controlled.

NZ In what order do you proceed. Do you dye first or do you first cut out the pieces?

PA Depends on the piece and its structure. Each piece has its own logic. In these more recent pieces, I cut after. It has to be methodical, because I need to keep everything in order. So I take a hunk of fabric, I squirt color onto it, and then I cut out after. In these works, the forms are dictated by the flow of the dye. I follow that, respecting those shapes.

NZ In the L'avventura piece, the cut outs in the fabric, were they hand made or somehow mechanically done?

PA It's all done by hand. But the logic is also somewhat mechanical. I always have some sort of system for organizing the piece, so there is an interplay between handmade and machine-like.

NZ How do you organize complex work like this or the Powerpuff pieces for example?

PA In Powerpuff each piece is numbered and organized by a complex system based on the colors. A piece like Eclipse is much more intuitive. It also allows for improvisation in the individual installation. It was made according to a certain logic, which is then somewhat flexible. On the one hand there is total chance and chaos between the single shapes, but the sections are fixed. The sections can be in different order, but I would never mix those sections.

NZ Do you make drawings?

PA Yes, I make drawings, and all pieces are usually worked out by plan. And a lot of times I work with a model. But this is more for the relation of the work to the space, and not so much for the internal logic of the piece. I sometimes make diagrams so that someone else can install the piece, but that's usually after the fact.

NZ And how do the different layers of fabric stick together, do you glue them?

PA Gravity! It's very dependable, and it's important to feel the weight of the fabric. On the other hand, there is a sense of vulnerability, it could just blow away.

NZ How do you define the borders of the work? Sometimes, like in the Eclipse, there is a blot not connected to the rest of the piece so that a little bit of the floor is showing. Is the floor in this case part of the artwork?

PA Yes – one of the big variables with this work is the floor, and yes, absolutely – the floor becomes part of the work – the walls too – I want to use the work to activate the space around it, not to stand out as an object.

NZ Did you ever refuse an exhibition because of a floor you didn't want to work with?

PA I treat the floor as a found object. If someone says, "well, it's covered with carpet", my first reaction might be "I don't want to do this" – but then I get curious and the question becomes "how can I do it?". Certain artists would paint the floor, and that would become part of it. I like the fact that it's kind of a given, and that I can work with it or against it.

NZ So would you agree that an artwork on the floor can only exist in a specific space and in a specific time frame? Or, to put it another way, what do the categories of space and time mean to you?

PA Right – the work – if I understand the question – exists, but it's not about being permanent, it also changes. In that sense my work is like a piece of music that is new every time someone else plays it. I like the idea of temporality and I like the idea of the serial. I have kept the work open to process. It's a lighter, more fluid idea of the work. It doesn't have to exist forever. I am not so materialistic, although I work with materials.

NZ How important is the size of the work for you? Usually you seem to work rather big scale.

PA I go back and forth – some pieces have been very big, but I do small works as well. The issues are different – for me it is not about scale so much as the relation to the architecture. And to affect the space, you need to work large. Also, being on the floor, you have, in effect a very large canvas, much larger than the wall, usually.

NZ An exhibition like Powerpuff – could you see that work in a small scale?

PA I did do little Puffs. I did, one for each, a sketch piece with the leftover materials. They are more like drawings. And because each character was so tight, I wanted to see if I could do each in a different way.

NZ Now, what about your titles. Many times you have these Pop Art titles like Wonderbread, reminding me of titles like the Brillo box. But your work is so far away from the actual object that you feel the gap.

PA Yes, the titles are indirect – they are more about associations and qualities of the work, not a literal illustration. Titles are also important in the process of working – they help give me the rules, or the structure of the piece. In that sense, the pop references are something that people recognize, but they don't have to be specific – they are part of the atmosphere today.

NZ Now I want to get to the gender question ... Do you think using fabric as a material still has sort of a female quality?

PA I'm not so concerned with this issue. I object to the idea that things that are soft and flexible are necessarily feminine, or that my work has anything to do with "fabric" or "fiber" art. It's not so much about the material – canvas is a fabric, after all. it's more a sensibility, and a quality of the work, not the materials.

NZ What do you think when you read about your art that it is "girly, tough, cool, generous, beautiful and calculating"?

PA Well, that is exactly what got me interested in the Powerpuff girls – that they could be both tough and beautiful.There is a generational split here – I am old enough to have had some contact with 70's feminism, although I was never part of it; on the other hand, I like the generous, optimistic spirit of the Powerpuff Girls, which comes from another generation.

NZ Would that connect your work to Lynda Benglis?

PA Absolutely. But I do not see her work only in terms of feminism. Along with other artists of the 70's – women and men – she opened up a lot of new territory to work in – new materials and spaces that people had not thought of as art works before.

NZ One thing I always read is people comparing your work to Monet's Waterlilies How do you feel about that?

PA Of course I appreciate the range of historical reference – what people forget is Pointillism – for me this idea of making of forms by little segments of forms, has more to do with Pointillism. Maybe the Monet reference comes from the light quality, and the sense of immersion. I understand where people are coming from, and I don't want to shut that down. On the contrary, I want the work to be open to as wide a range of interpretation as possible.

NZ Many times critics writing about your work have had organic associations, comparing it to viruses or radioactive fungus. Do you go along with that?

PA Well, when I first read that my sense was no, it's not about the organic. But in fact I'm more comfortable with that idea now – I think it's about the flow, the lack of control, and the way that the colors and pieces proliferate – they do sometimes act like an out of control virus. What is interesting to me is the range of associations viewers make – from landscape to Pop Art. I want to keep that openness. The organic is one reading, but it's not the only reading. It's the play between the organic and the artificial that is interesting to me. I think that's something that happens in the urban context.

NZ What importance does the tradition of Minimalism still have to you?

PA For me Minimalism is like a sense of permission – that it is possible to work on the floor, to make art that is not a painting or a conventional sculpture. I like the simplicity of Minimalism, and I respect its history, but I'm not part of it – it's just part of the landscape I inherited.

NZ What's your comment to the thesis that your floor sculpture is the most opposite you can get to Carl Andre's?

PA In one sense he's smarter, you can walk on it! It is not a self-conscious "critical" re-working of Andre in soft materials. That I disagree with. I don't like that cynicism. If you work on the floor you have to deal with Andre, and people are going to make that association. I just don't want to limit the reading as a response to Andre – there is so much else going on, and so many other people have worked on the floor.

NZ Does working on the floor still have the notion of "reversing high and low" for you?

PA Yes, I think people still think of the floor either in pragmatic or decorative terms – carpets, or mosaics. It's an unfamiliar place for a work of art, and frankly, very awkward for people to deal with. So it makes them ask questions.

NZ And do you think it is a rebellious act to"bring down the boundaries of painting and sculpture"?

PA I think I ama little rebellious – not so much in an avant-garde sense of dissolving the boundaries between painting and sculpture, but just that it's a strange place to be. A lot of people think it is bizarre to work on the floor. In the beginning for me the ground had to do with casualness, the everyday, like a pile of laundry on the floor. But I realized, I could work out a lot of ideas there – there was space to work. Now it just feels like the place where I want to be. Working on the floor made me aware of space. I work on the wall too, but now it is always in relation to the space.

In catalogue: Skulptur als Feld, Kunstverein Göttingen, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2001