Polly Apfelbaum
If there is a single thing that defines my work it is the horizontal plane. Thinking about Rome, I have been interested in the many examples of floor-based works there: Roman mosaics, Cosmati floors, or the Baroque floors of Borromini’s St. Ivo. For me, the next step would be to see this work in context, in person: to understand the color and the geometry and the systems or nonsystems. My large scale installations are often based on combinatory systems; I am convinced that I could learn from the intricacy of these works in Rome. Any work that operates beyond the scale of the body is also a physical experience; what someone has described as the fusion of feverish and dynamic baroque excesses with a rationalist geometry. I believe that this contradiction is present in my work, and it is something I look forward to exploring in Rome.