Polly Apfelbaum

Polly E. Apfelbaum (born Abington, Pennsylvania 1955) is an American contemporary visual artist, who is primarily known for her colorful drawings, sculptures, and fabric floor pieces, which she refers to as "fallen paintings".

She currently lives and works in New York City, New York.

Polly Apfelbaum was born in 1955 in Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

Apfelbaum has lived and worked in New York City since 1978.

That same year, she received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.

Apfelbaum also received training from SUNY Purchase College in New York.

Polly Apfelbaum has exhibited widely since the 1980s, including one-person exhibitions at:

She has been showing her work consistently in the United States and internationally since her first one-person show in 1986.

Apfelbaum came to prominence in the 1990s and is best known for what the artist refers to as her "fallen paintings."

These large-scale, 'anti-monumental', horizontal installations consist of hundreds of hand-cut and hand-dyed pieces of velvet fabric that are arranged on the floor.

These installations exist as a hybrid between painting and sculpture and occupy an ambiguous space between the two genres.

Lane Relyea states "Apfelbaum's work is both painting and sculpture, and perhaps photography and fashion and formless material process as well."

Operativo, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, (2001)

In 2003, a major mid-career survey show of Apfelbaum's work opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

The show traveled through 2004 to the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalogue surveying 15 years of the artist's work was published by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

"Studiowork" with Nicole Cherubini (2010);

Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including:

Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (2012);

Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai, India (2013).

Two person shows including:

AMERICANA: Formalizing Craft, Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL (2013);

Clifton Benevento (2014);

Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA (2014);

lumber room, Portland, OR (2014);

Burlington City Arts Center (2014);

"Karma Funk Factory" with Steven Westfall (2014);

"For the Love of Gene Davis" with Dan Cole (2014);

Bepart, Waregem, Belgium (2015);

Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA (2015);

Three Graces, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2015);

Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today, Museum of Art and Design, New York (2015);

Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA (2016);

56 Henry (2016);

"The Sound of Ceramics" with Wang Lu (2016);

"Erasing Tracing Racing Paint" with Dona Nelson (2016);

An Irruption of the Rainbow, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2016);

Wall to Wall, MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland, OH (2016);

Alexander Gray Associates (2017);

la chapelle Saint-Jean (Le Sourn), part of L’art dans les chapelles – 26e édition (2017);