2016: ATTACHMENTS AND SEPARATION
SOLO EXHIBITION
23 June – 30 July 2016
Lizamore & Associates
Johannesburg, South Africa
In ‘Attachments and Separation’ the artist has clearly placed himself with his hopes and fears, dreams and imaginings, wakefulness and sweet slumbers, to the fore. In some ways death seems to be implied in many of the works, but Pfaff is never morbid.
It is as if he is talking of transitions between states or of a becoming as much as an unbecoming. His sculptures have a temporal implication as if we are seeing slices of time and space or frames in a celluloid movie strip. He is not didactic or telling us what is going to happen insomuch as he is suggesting a possible route or path that may be taken but may also be avoided or deferred. As the artist himself puts it: ‘The truth is in-between’.
Pfaff is saying we are all potentially able to transcend our current existence and be mutable personas. We may literally be in two spaces (mental or spiritual) at once, just as some of his sculptures appear to be walking through walls in this exhibition. All this is presented with a sort of sly chuckle from the artist, as if he is sharing the joke with us and telling us to takes things – serious things – just a bit less seriously. We can let our imagination pass through his works, with their open spaces and open meanings and find a place, like he does, in-between.
Andrew Lamprecht, art historian, theorist, curator, art writer