The Pfaff Diaspora: ‘Beyond the Canvas’ at Art Cake

Judy Pfaff, Untitled, 2025, carpet, neon, metal, resin, approx. 6’x9’x2’. Courtesy of Sylvia Schwartz.

By STEPHEN WOZNIAK February 23, 2025

While it’s certainly not storming outside, a quick look through the window reveals a fluffy layer of quieting snow across the sidewalk, reminding me that winter is truly here in New York City. Thank goodness I’m on the inside. As I stand in the depths of Art Cake’s warm rear gallery, a colored course of neon blood flow passes from a twisted aortal glass tube and spreads along the back wall in one of artist Judy Pfaff’s larger untitled works. If I were cold and tired upon entry, this nearly kinetic, almost undulating and utterly fascinating new sculpture certainly wakes my spirit, raises my temperature and places me into the pulse of the present. The push and pull of the flower-patterned folding fibers that billow from the piece into my shared space is like a tapestry tornado, something I can imagine ripping through the countryside and shattering building blocks everywhere along its path. A gaggle of small red, yellow and black painted circles appear to roll down the hilly upper left corner of the work, while to the right, neatly ordered yellow, black and white circles suspended on the wall—featuring cartoon brickwork patterns—reiterate such cellular forms. Two suspended black umbrella frames with their canopies shorn free tell me that the winds—of proverbial change or even climate change—have obliterated our meager efforts to ward off the storm and stay upright on paths ahead. Maybe it’s an analogy about the troubled times we live in and must bear. It is an extraordinary work, if enough time is spent with it to reach the delightful, daunting and unexpected realms of viewer experience it offers.

Judy Pfaff, 2025. Courtesy of Peter Aaron/OTTO.

Pfaff’s space-altering art and the dynamic work of three artists, who decades ago were her students, are now on view in Beyond the Canvas: Touch, Trace, Tangle. It is clear that those other artists—Suzan Shutan, Sylvia Schwartz and Chere Krakovsky—have taken heed from Pfaff’s will to defy the rectilinear picture plane rules and formats that abounded during her early years as a painter. As implied in the show title, a common thread runs through most of the work on hand and provides a kind of amorphous, tactile playing field rather than a classic white box punctuated by discrete pictures hanging in a row. As such, the work is not necessarily to be read but experienced, which also reflects the complimentary make-as-you-go working process that most of these artists engage in.

Suzan Shutan, Energy Grid: X-tra Heavy, 2020, vinyl on board, steel wire, pom poms, 2’ x 4’ x 8.” Courtesy of Sylvia Schwartz.

Largely different—though not diametrically opposite—to Pfaff’s installations are the geometric works of artist Suzan Shutan. While I love Shutan’s blinking, circular canvases, 3 of 7 Moons, featuring vibrantly colored gridwork and busy, biomorphic fun forms, it is her large Energy Grid: X-tra Heavy piece that grabs my attention. Made of vinyl on board and the cutest of colorful craft pom poms, the work provides a play between background and foreground, shadow and light, particles and energy. Pinned and floating from thin wires in connected X-formations, the chorus of pom poms—which quiver ever so slightly as I walk by—make me want to reach out and pet them. But there is life in these friendly fuzzy orbs already, so I abstain—and observe instead. The work is at once adorable, accessible and innocent, yet offers foundations of form, delighting in depth and color, perhaps asking questions about our primary sensory perceptions. 

Chere Krakovsky, Bead Photo #2, 2020, photographic giclee print, 27”x35.” Courtesy of Chere Krakovsky.

Next in the gallery are the video and photographic works of Chere Krakovsky. While the open edge and quiet outrage presented in videos like the autobiographical The Artist and the role-liberating The Secretary are fine works to watch, I prefer her photographic prints of hair and jewel-like beads. One of my favorites is Bead Photo #2, from 2020. It’s about the size and orientation of a typical one-sheet movie poster and, upon cursory glance, feels as if it could be magazine-ad imagery for Tiffany & Co. But on closer inspection, the jewels could be faceted junk plastic—the kind found on 1970s elastic hair ties used by pre-teen girls. This particular work, which spotlights variously colored, transparent beads on a Styrofoam board, suggests feelings of the loss of innocence, of halcyon times gone by—never to be recovered.

 
Installation view of various works by Sylvia Schwartz from 2025. Courtesy of Sylvia Schwartz.

While there are plenty of great individual works by artist Sylvia Schwartz on view, the connected overlapping installation of these heavy-hung, room-remediating woolen rags almost feel like one big piece. Growing from wall to perpendicular wall, around doorways and hanging from ceiling to floor, Schwartz’ robust, shaggy works are made from hundreds of hours of looming and knotting thousands of yards of yarn. Most hang from horizontal wooden dowels, like fine tapestries, yet these are their primal shredded sisters, letting their hair hang down and enmeshing viewers as they pass through the enchanting abstract landscape Schwartz offers.

Aligning with a perennial goal of Western artists since the late modern era to deliver a rich sensory experience, Beyond the Canvas: Touch, Trace, Tangle deftly that breaks the borders of what art is and how it might be conceived for today’s audiences. Through Judy Pfaff’s dramatic, illuminating, color-rich wall installations and the mature work of her former students, the show invites viewers into a dynamic, hands-on world where art is not just simply seen but often deeply felt—even after they leave the building. From the abstract electric energy of Suzan Shutan’s colorful pom pom grids to the provocative commentary in Chere Krakovsky’s photographs of faux jewels, as well as the immersive, ragged, otherworldly installations by Sylvia Schwartz, this exhibition reflects the artists’ shared commitment to breaching formal conventions and engaging all our senses in right-now three-dimensional space. It’s a near celebration of artistic freedom, tactile exploration and the raw beauty and brutality that emerges when boundaries are not just challenged and cracked, but delightfully redefined.

Beyond the Canvas: Touch, Trace, Tangle
January 31 to February 28, 2025

Art Cake

WM