Cristin Tierney Gallery is pleased to participate in Independent 20th Century. Visit us in Booth C1 to view a special presentation of historic Judy Pfaff works from the late 1980s and early '90s, including works on paper, mounted mixed-media wall works, and a large-scale sculpture installation. The fair opens with an invite-only preview day on Thursday, September 4th, and continues through Sunday, September 7th.
For over five decades, Judy Pfaff has redefined what it means to be a sculptor, creating innovative spatial works that blend painting, assemblage, and architecture into sprawling site-specific installations. Through both intense planning and improvisational decision-making, her dynamic compositions—often described as “painting in space”—meld disparate everyday objects, conventional and unconventional materials, colors, shapes, and surfaces into ad hoc environments that transform the spaces they inhabit.
Pfaff has continually reinvented her unique visual language. Weaving personal narrative with abstract form, she harnesses limitless techniques, using painting, sculpture, collage, welding and glassblowing, carpentry, printmaking, and design to realize her visions. Critics reference her as a pioneer of installation art; this oft-cited label barely contrasts her sprawling career to the ever-changing work she has been making for decades and still today.
The 1980s marked a particularly momentous period in Pfaff’s career. During that decade, she received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her work was exhibited at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the 1981 and 1987 Whitney Biennials; the Renaissance Society; the 1982 Venice Biennale; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum); the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Museum of Modern Art; the Brooklyn Museum; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; P.S.1; CAM Houston; and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others.
La Calle, La Calle Vieja (1990) represents the culmination of this breakthrough decade and the crystallization of Pfaff’s genre-defying strategies. This monumental sculptural installation—a three-dimensional, abstract version of a still-life painting—combines a bright, riotous palette with sweeping lines and a playfully off-kilter sense of balance.
Pfaff’s installation, La Calle, La Calle Vieja, is intended to emulate the experience of walking through a city, confronting a chaotic assemblage of visual stimuli. The background displays a sign advertising soft drinks and cigarettes, while the front extends from the wall with a gallon of olive oil, blue acrylic propellers, and a watering can. These objects maintain their distinct identities, standing out amidst a dizzying amalgam of abstract forms. Works from this period and style are held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the High Museum in Atlanta.
This presentation at Independent 20th Century represents only a fragment of Pfaff’s prolific and complex body of work. On Friday, October 17th, Cristin Tierney Gallery will open Judy Pfaff’s first solo exhibition with the gallery featuring new and recent works. This will mark the first solo show at the gallery’s new Tribeca location on 49 Walker Street and will be on view through Saturday, December 20th, 2025.
Judy Pfaff (b. 1946, London, UK) received a BFA from Washington University, Saint Louis (1971), and an MFA from Yale University (1973). Her work spans disciplines, from painting to printmaking to sculpture to installation. Pfaff has exhibited work in the Whitney Biennials of 1975, 1981, and 1987, and represented the United States in the 1998 São Paulo Bienal. She has recently had solo exhibitions at The Schnitzer Collection, Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center, the Sarasota Museum of Art, and the Truro Center for the Arts. Pfaff’s works reside in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Tate Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, among others. She has received many awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center (2014), the MacArthur Foundation Award (2004), and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1983). Pfaff lives and works in Tivoli, New York.
Founded in 2010, Cristin Tierney Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with a deep commitment to the presentation, development, and support of a roster of both established and emerging artists. Its program emphasizes artists engaged with critical theory and art history, with an emphasis on conceptual, video, and performance art. Education and audience engagement is central to our mission. Cristin Tierney Gallery is a member of the ADAA (Art Dealers Association of America).