Polly Apfelbaum

American, born 1955

BiographyPolly Apfelbaum (b. 1955) lives and works in New York. She is a graduate of the Tyler School of Art. Her work is included in numerous museum collections, among them the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Polly Apfelbaum is internationally known for her installations of hand-dyed, cut velvet. She calls them "fallen paintings" because they appear as if they slid from the wall and came to rest on the floor. These installations are comprised of an accumulation of smaller "compositions" on velvet and appear to ooze into a given space like a viscous liquid in motion or the mitosis of cells. These works have allowed her to explore the nature of painting and sculpture, as well as textiles and the various connotations associated with them.

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