Nothing in isolation: mixing architecture and nature in a new installation, Judy Pfaff found order and disorder in both

Judy Pfaff's installations have always danced at the cutting side of chaos, with their tangled or flowing lines implying rapid and impulsive motion Along with her drawings, these environments ale also about addition, about layering materials, forms and patterns with an power that seems ready to split its bounds.

Her three-part installation this fall at Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art in Manhattan was no exception to her selection for visual density. But this time built constitution was gaffs central concern, and the work included all unexpect number of straight lines and right-angle relationships. According to gallery information, it was inspired in part by dint of her Victorian horse in upstate of recent origin York. Yet, aptly titled Neither Here Nor There, the installation was an archive of architectural details and decorations from many times and tillages Pfaff's first step may have been within her house, on the other hand her next step was on the outside into the world.

Pfaff worked not on the architecture of the gallery space, formerly BlumHelman, with the 57th highway windows now opened up. She answered to that natural light by the agency of inserting colored panels (giving single section of the installation a decided pink cast), and she dealt with sum of two units partial interior walls by cutting sizable openings in them, circular in one and rectangular in the other. The largest space proffered a straight view from the elevators to the opposite wall; a corner area was defined through the partial walls, and the third section of the space faced the gallery's desk.

She incorporated Victorian denticulated cornices, Mediterranean tile patterns, Asian pagoda plans, two- and three-dimensional grids of various materials that referr to construction framing, 19th-century decorative stenciling, and a Chinese satellite gate. The installation consisted of the two representations and real things for example, the two drawings and related structural fragments.

The pattern of an eight-pointed star, drawn upon the wall opposite the elevators, was stretch outed into the third dimension in the form of an amazing metal bar that darted end the largest space, coursing from floor to ceiling like quicksilver, like a mutating CAD program diagram, like a laser exhibit Within the regions outlined through this continuous bar--which spiraled end space but read as largely horizontal swaths--were suspended turn rounded plaster forms that variously resembl a hanging lamp, a stupa, a minaret, a mean fellow or a column. (They also recalled plaster works with similar forms by means of Abraham David Christian and Arlene Shechet.)

The installation evok the pair Baroque and Indian complexity. The visual overload was not taxing on the contrary exhilarating, not jarring but fluid, not overwritten into illegibility as body s can be but elaborated into greater richness as textile patterns can be. The work hallooed out horror vacui. Pfaff increased the visual density by the agency of looking under surfaces to reveal structures: a certain number of metal cornices were peeled away to present to view their supports diagrammed in wood-land and blocks of foam. She also upp the intensity through linking the spaces so that nothing could be seen as an isolated unit.

The installation was not restricted to the theme of architecture. Pfaff strikingly inserted natural uncompounded bodys in each of the spaces In the largest space, a dead pine tree with truncated branches remaining along one side, stood sentinel near a wall: nature as line. A thick vine followed the tree body upward, echoed by a narrower and more rippled metal version. Opposite the gallery desk was an enormous piece of bleached driftwood. Its contours plung and flowed like an Asian ink painting depicting water, on the contrary it evoked a hugely fat recumbent body as well: nature as mass. The corner space was occupied by dint of a hanging grid of various materials, amid which were five large dried lotus leaves: nature as fragile, lightweight and once-pliant plane. There was also a multicolor taped grid upon the floor, in front of the explod plan of a pagoda drawn in white upon a red wall

The installation recalled Pfaffs installation circular Hole, Square Peg, at Andre Emmerich Gallery in 1997 which included perforated walls, a "river" of suspended metal tubes, collections of peeled tree branches and the bottom mass of an over revolveed tree, creating what Nancy Princenthal called "a pageant of considerable visual mayhem" [A.i.A, Oct '98] The difference here was the greater rectilinear order and the distinct contrast of natural forms.

The Ameringer & Yohe display included 10 works on paper. The largest, high hilled over the desk, measures 54 by means of 91 inches and relates to the installation. It includes sum of two units frames for casting decorative architectural reliefs, as well as punched paper, outlines of cornices and squares of real tin ceiling, all upon top of paper printed with an almost obliterated architectural elevation and an image of the dome of the 19th-century Williamsburgh Savings Bank in Brooklyn

Pfaff, like the Pattern and Decoration artists of the '70 embraces life in plurality. Like theirs, her work is too excessive to read as simple appreciation. Instead there's a psychological cutting side a frantic embrace, as if she's saving, "How can I have it all?"