Paul Heyer & Kembra Pfahler
Paul Heyer’s playfully unsettling paintings envision a fictive world that defies natural order, wherein every form is changeable. Painted on polyester taffeta and in a state of constant transformation, trees grow luminous blue apples and branches sprout dangling brooms. His recognizable subjects take on new meaning while suspended within a non-specific amniotic realm. Hovering at the edge of the material world, Heyer recontextualized signifiers hold potential for infinite readings.
His recent body of work conjures a futuristic goth fantasy in search of transcendence. Activated by energetic brush strokes and throbbing with potentiality, his paintings embody transitional moments of becoming. His subjects simultaneously bloom, evolve, wither, and die, always on the verge of transformation. In Broom Tree, Heyer disrupts his compositions with shimmering white orbs that appear both solid and void. These circles obscure his subjects, symbolizing gaps in human understanding and perception—welcoming his viewers into the unknown.
Kembra Pfahler is an artist, filmmaker and rock musician, formative in the LA punk scene in the 1970s and in the downtown New York underground scene of the 1980s and 90s. She co-founded horror-inspired, glam, punk, shock-rock band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black in 1990 and performs as the band’s lead singer. TVHOKB employs music, film and hand-made props in its legendary live performances, dismantling archetypical paradigms of femininity and furthering the artist’s philosophy of “availabilism” - making the best use of what’s available - and anti-naturalism.
“The Wall of Vagina was born out of a discussion I had with my band while on tour in the US. We traveled in a Winnebago and always looked through men’s magazines at truck stops. Once we bought a Penthouse that showed four girls stacked on top of each other like pancakes, provoking a feeding frenzy from all of us. Not one, not two, not three…but four girls! I thought it would look sculptural to have the Girls of Karen Black as a Wall of Vagina. I did the old turkey-baster-with-plain-yogurt as a topping for the wall, and it provokes a complex reaction from the audience who don’t know whether to applaud or vomit. A couple of years later, at a show in LA that was organized by Ron Athey and Vaginal Creme Davis… I did the W.O.V. live again and we decided to do a photo shoot in the garden of the hotel we were staying at, The Highland Gardens. These are the photos by legendary filmmaker Bruce LaBruce.”
-Kembra Pfahler
Paul Heyer (b.1982) was born and currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. In 2009 he received his MFA in painting from Columbia University. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018), Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2013, 2016, 2019), and Chapter NY (2014, 2016). His work has also been included in group exhibitions at Perrotin (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2017), Park View/Paul Soto, Los Angeles (2017), Andrea Rosen Gallery (2016), Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago (2016), Rodeo Gallery London (2015), Young Art, Los Angeles (2013), 356 Mission Angeles (2015) and Rachel Uffner Gallery, NY (2012).
Kembra Pfahler (b. 1961) lives and works in New York City. Recent performances include SHE WHO SAW BEAUTIFUL THINGS, The Kitchen (New York, NY, USA, 2019) and Sex Cells, Lethal Amounts (Los Angeles, US, 2019). Solo exhibitions include Capital Improvements, Emalin (London, UK, 2016); Fuck Island, Participant Inc. (New York, NY, USA, 2012); File Under ‘V’, Rove Gallery (London, UK, 2005); Availabism and Anti-naturalism: A Feminine Experiment, American Fine Arts Company (New York, NY, USA, 2002); and Riddle of the Sphinx, Deitch Projects (New York, NY, USA 2002). Selected group exhibitions include The Conditions Of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery And American Fine Arts, Co. (1983-2004), CSS Bard Hessel Museum of Art (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA, 2018); Future Feminism, The Hole (New York, NY, USA, 2014); New York Minute, Garage Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow, RU, 2011) traveling to MACRO Museum (Rome, IT, 2011); and Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY, USA, 2008).