Judy Rifka

Judy Rifka and Tom Warren feature in a December 15, 2022 article by Miss Rosen in Blind Magazine called "ABC No Rio: New York's Free Spirit". The article mentions that in the fall of 1981, Tom Warren brought his traveling Phto Studio to ABC No Rio where he photographed locals and artists to create a portrait of the times.

Curated by Carlo McCormick and UCCA Curator-at-Large Peter Eleey, “Somewhere Downtown” at UCCA Beijing brings together various artists that narrate a "period of radical experimentation against a backdrop of the AIDS crisis, the rapid gentrification of the city, and the development of consumer culture". Some works of Judy Rifka will be exhibited among paintings and drawings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and many others.

New York City, May 20th, 2022 The Studio 111 Brooklyn from New York City hosted a three-days group art show. Patti Astor, the founder of FUN GALLERY, was also present as a special guest. Judy Rifka's works were also exhibited among artworks of artists like Pierre Jean Baptiste, Ronald Bianco, Danny Cortes, Ori Carino, COSE, DELTA 2, Al Diaz, DUKE9, Julian Gardair, Joseph Guillette, Rich Fie, Tim Kent, Valeri Larko, Hayley Martell, Mike Mills, Eric Orr, Amy Regalia, Judy Rifka, Leia Sands, Michael Saviello, Albert Sqambati, SNAKE-1, Jim Tozzi, Omar Villegas & Melanie Vote. Please click here to learn more about Judy Rifka. PRESS CONTACT Katherina Zeifang katherina@pulpogallery.com +49 171 1778796

Galerie Schöttle, Judy Rifka, Rüdiger Schöttle, Brygida Ochaim, Katherina Zeifang, Nico Zeifang.

Murnau, October 14, 2021 In this article from October 14, 2021 published in Murnauer Tagblatt, the German journalist Birgit Schwarzenberger writes about the countless, highly...

Noah Becker and legendary NYC artist Judy Rifka talk about her 5-decade long career in which she crossed paths with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and many others. During the podcast, Judy reveals that René Ricard wrote parts of his infamous The Radiant Child article at her place and she still owns the original notes.

PULPO GALLERY now represents Judy Rifka. In her practice, Rifka explores space as an emotional connection and the form or body that comes out of it. Rifka has exhibited at two Whitney Biennials, Documenta 7, the infamous Times Square show as well as the inaugural PS1 exhibit. Her retrospective "A Glance Through The Rearview Mirror" will run from September 24 to October 31, 2021.

In an article for Document Journal titled "The DIY magic of Art-Rite, the magazine that redevined the 1970s art scene" Miss Rosen writes: "Art-Rite, as it would soon be known, came into being when the triumvirate applied for the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1973. Still in its formative years, the ISP, which would later count Félix González-Torres, Kathryn Bigelow, and Jenny Holzer among its alumni, only offered programs for artists and art historians. “Our challenge was irresistible: What, no art critics?” Robinson says. “We were accepted, with our project being to launch Art-Rite magazine, made welcome in both divisions of the ISP, and off we went.”"

The American artist, Brooklyn-born, Judy Rifka, was the quintessential art star of her generation. Every major critic who saw her paintings in the 70's and 80's wrote glowingly about them. Her contribution to painting is indisputable. She was best friends with Keith Haring, was a lover and student of Ron Gorchov, is the ex-wife of painter David Reed (now at Gagosian) and is the mother of NYC writer, John Reed. She's in 26 museums around the world, was in two Whitney Biennials, participated in the infamous Times Square show and the inaugural PS1 exhibit. And then by 1993, with the closing of her Blue-Chip gallery, Brooke-Alexander, Rifka faded from the art world's attention.

Murnau, August 26th, 2020 With COVID still raging across the world, Pulpo Gallery hosts another online only show that takes its visitors on a journey...

When asked about her contribution to Art-Rite, Judy Rifka said: "Because my children were small and it was hard for me to get around town so I decided to do 2000 individual issues by hand at home. We had the paper printed up with the art right logo and I went to work. It was astounding."

Alexandra Goldman interviewed Judy Rifka for Whitehot Magazine: "When Rifka spoke, I felt like I was being taken on an unapologetic beeline journey into her psyche that gave me a loving slap when I arrived and left me wanting to come back for more. Around Judy, I knew I was in the presence of greatness."

ANTE Up the ANTE reviews Judy Rifka's "Ionic Ironic: Myths from the 80's" exhibition at CORE Club:

Judy Rifka is featured in a new tabletop book by John Gosslee and Heather Zises called "50 Contemporary Women Artists: Groundbreaking Contemporary Art from 1960 to Now". The compendium features a selection of women artists who have made groundbreaking contributions to contemporary art and presents fresh perspectives on feminism and notions of cultural power. Amongst others, artists in the book include Bharti Kher, Judy Rifka, Kara Walker, Marilyn Minter, Mickalene Thomas.

New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells discusses reopening of the Union Square Cafe and highlights its art collection featuring works by Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg and Judy Rifka

Harper's Bazaar Arabia's Rebecca Anne Proctor ran a long article about Judy Rifka titled "Lessons in Movement. Bringing an East Side vibe to Dubai, New York-based artist Judy Rifka shows a mix of old and new works in RETROactive at the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation".

The Jean-Paul Najar Foundation presented in September 2016 it's first solo exhibition ": RETROactive" of Judy Rifka. For this show Rifka spend two weeks in Dubai and created a series of works that were exhibited along with her works from the 70's.

Glynn Pogue interviews Judy Rifka about her 40+ year career as well as her retrospective at the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation in Dubai

"For the longest time, I have wondered about Judy Rifka's art." ... "I saw figures and other recognizable objectcs painted with Judy Rifka's familiar lines, and I saw unrecognizable abstract shapes folding over themselves like metaphysical origami suggesting new relationships..." ... “Malevich, over one hundred years ago, tried to work his way through painting space,” she has said, and adds, referring to her own work, he “tried to understand that space. I found out later from someone in math that that it is a convex hull.”

Quiet Lunch reviewed "Bodega de la Haba Presents Frieze Frame: Important Works by American Artist Judy Rifka.": If you aren’t privy to what Judy Rifka means to the New York City art scene and the genre of intermedia art in general, this exhibition is a must-see.

"To talk to Rifka is to hear about a lifetime breathing art, an uncensored lust for trying out ideas." begins Jennifer Samet's recollection of meeting Rifka at her studio followed by lunch at Union Square Café, which spots large murals Rifka painted in the 1980s.

Andrea Scrima discusses Judy Rifka's foray into the world of online art: "It’s this less-than-perfect world that so much of Judy Rifka’s online art springs from, this precarious mixture of public and private that we enter into when we engage in social media. Some of the titles read like chapter headings in an artist’s book of survival: “For the Next Four Hours I Will Be Marking Papers”; “I Can’t Get a Thing Done with Your Constant Interruptions”; “Into the Soup for a Soupy Commute”; some are simply views from her window—the Manhattan Bridge in the snow, or at sunrise, or a group of children playing outside on Market Street below. Everyday life persists; seasons come and go. In a triptych titled “Ha ha ha ha,” a Rifka of stern mien holds up paper cut-outs of the words “Ha Ha” to the laptop camera’s ever-watchful eye—and already I have my daily dose of mockery to toss in the face of fear so that I might begin my day monster-free."

Philadelphia, July 11, 2010 The Philadelphia Inquirer uses a Judy Rifka Single Shape to illustrate their article titled 'Art: Vogels' challenging, adventurours collection' which discusses...

Lilly Wei reviews Judy Rifka's show "Nostos" at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City: "Judy Rifka's recent exhibition at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City was her first solo show in the metropolitan area in over 6 years, and one wonders why this talented, volatile artist, associated with the artists' collective Colab and the freewheeling East Village/Lower East Side scene in the late '70s and 80's, has absented herself for so long. The show was titled "Nostos," which is apparently the ancient Greek root from which the word "nostalgia" is derived and means a return or homecoming as well as a species of fish - all of which is appropriate to Rifka's current project."

Frank Holliday went to see Judy Rifka's latest show at The Chocolate Factory near P.S.1 and wrote a review for Gay City News: "The first time I became aware of Judy Rifka's work was in a show curated by Haring at Ross Bleckner's building that housed the Mudd Club at 77 White Street in Lower Manhattan. The paintings were gray fields with outlined figures floating among geometric dashes. People went crazy for them and she became a major influence in turning the art direction toward post-modernism. She has since had major shows in every museum and is collected around the world. After laying low for a few years, Rifka has chosen to show her recent works, which return to her alternative roots, at an intriguing space out of the mainstream, the Chocolate Factory."

Cassandra Neyenesch reviews Judy Rifka's show "Nostos" for The Brooklyn Rail: "Since her days at the forefront of postmodern painting in the 80’s, Judy Rifka’s oeuvre has been admirably restless. There is an interplay between subject and expression that makes her difficult to pin down as an artist; sometimes one seems to take precedence and sometimes the other, but they are equally important to her, and this creates a continual tension inside the work. Her new series at the Chocolate Factory demonstrates the complexity of her project. Shapes resembling mangled abattoir leavings are painted in livid reds and bone-blues and dark purples on natural linen, then the painting is cut out and glued to another piece of linen. Smaller canvas collages are more restrained, made of cut-out circular shapes that seem to refer both to an older obsession of Rifka’s with classicizing forms and to the Russian Suprematists."

Charlie Finch wrote a new piece titled Wishlist for the Dog Days for Artnet suggesting Judy Rifka should get another showing at the Whitney: "The Unfinished Woman" In light of the moronic tits and ass now infecting Reality Show America, it's time to return to the feminist pioneers of post-war USA and select some outstanding works of liberation, femme style, from the forgotten past. Artists could include Joan Brown, Hannah Wilkie, Rebecca Howland, Moira Dryer, Ree Morton, Ellen Berkenblit, Judy Rifka, Judy Pfaff, Cady Noland and so many others.

Charlie Finch mentioned Judy Rifka in his latest Artnet Feature: "Nope, the messiestas often do a lot of harm when their turn again comes around. Thousands of them on the East Village scene trampled a few forgotten geniuses such as Judy Rifka, Stephen Lack and Luis Frangella, and the LFL brigade is determined to bury fine formalists like Kurt Kauper or Will Cotton with the undisciplined vomit of Danica Phelps."

David Frankel discusses the history and contribution of Art-Rite to the art world for Artforum including Judy Rifka's contribution to the magazine: In this and the next two issues that year, these lists included Vito Acconci, Lawrence Alloway, Laurie Anderson, Eleanor Antin, Richard Armstrong, Rudolf Baranik, Gregory Battcock, David Bourdon, AA Bronson, Trisha Brown, Scott Burton, Lucinda Childs, Colette, Diego Cortez, Jeffrey Deitch, Richard Foreman, Hans Haacke, Alanna Heiss, Rebecca Horn, Neil Jenney, Bill Jensen, Jill Johnston, Joan Jonas, Lucy Lippard, Mabou Mines, Brice Marden, Annette Michelson, Elizabeth Murray, Steve Paxton, Robert Pincus-Witten, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Judy Rifka, Susan Rothenberg, Irving Sandler, Julian Schnabel (in 1975 Schnabel was twenty-four, and probably still working as a burger cook), Carolee Schneemann, Joan Simon, Jack Smith, Patti Smith, Holly Solomon, Nancy Spero, Alan Suicide, John Torreano, Hannah Wilke, Robert Wilson, Robin Winters, and many others both less and equally well known. As early as 1976, David Salle was writing for the magazine. It was a catholic community.

Vincent Carducci discusses Judy Rifka's exhibition of her "Pet Boy" series at Alley Culture: The "Pet Boy" motif, a cartoonish cat-headed male figure often rendered seminaked, made its first appearance in Rifka's work in the late 1970s. At that time, she adopted a feminist position which led her to appropriate techniques of the male gaze as an art strategy. Here the "Pet Boy" installation comprised dozens of outlined figures in several standardized poses, each mechanically reproduced on 5-by-S-inch card stock, arranged on the wall in floor-to-ceiling rows. The figures were hand-painted in a rainbow of flesh tones as a multicultural array of exotic yet commodified objects of desire. A Neo-Classical pattern on the banding of the underwear worn by many of the "Pet Boys" looks to have been derived from a Gianni Versace ad.

Former Artforum editor Joseph Masheck has published a new book which explores the open-ended possibilities of abstract painting in 30 essays and reviews: "Sampling the neoexpressionist flowering on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Masheck singles out Judy Rifka's archly iconoclastic urban dystopias and Sigmar Polke's Pop-imbued abstracts."

Judy Rifka’s “A. Museum”, 1982 adorns the cover of the December 1984 issue of Art in America and is accompanied by a 16-page article by Joseph Masheck: “Using Rifka’s Parthenon paintings as his prism, the author illuminates many moments in the strange family of classicism, examining works from Mannerism to Minimalism, Pop to the present. Like some classicizing art today, the result is a tour de force of references.”

Like Van Gogh, Rifka represents the universal dynamism of nature in the very interstices of the painting: what he did with his wonderfully fibrous brushstrokes, she does with the psychologically imposing physicality of her relief structure.

Artforum's March 1984 issue sees Glenn O'Brien discuss Judy Rifka's contribution to Colab, "A More Store", at Jack Tilton Gallery

The May issue of Kunstforum explores the contemporary art scene of New York and concludes that Judy Rifka is the quintessential New York artist: "Judy Rifka, a lively, active woman who immediately captivates you in every way, who at times seems like a personified New Yorker and conveys something of the aura, hecticness, excitement, but also the wit, the nonchalance, the quick-tempered cleverness of this city, sees herself as an outspoken representative of the post-minimal era."

There are no women in the show. ... there are plenty of women who would have more than held their own in the visual pairing done here. Along with Baselitz/Schnabel and Haring/Penck, there could have been Judy Rifka/Salle, Austé/Haring, Louisa Chase/Cucci, Pat Steir/Kiefer, and Joan Snyder/Schnabel, to name but a few.

From Bruce McLean’s man holding up a tape measure through the sci-fi figures of Keith Haring, to Judy Rifka’s acrobatic females . . . and, yes, we have boxers, saints, wimpy winners, sports champs, and headhunters, we’ve even got crucifixes and Jonathan Borofsky’s colossi. Why, it’s enough to make you throw up your hands. And, ladies and gentlemen, don’t worry, we make connections. We’ve got your late-night urban white girl tangled up with the black-man myth (Elvira Bach), and in the next room we’ve got paintings by the Black Man Himself, Jean Michel Basquiat.

But most important are her characters—a veritable New York cast. Most step out of the rock clubs; there are dancers, drummers, posers. And many are femmes fatales—racy ladies with high-heeled shoes, who strut their stuff and perform. These figures run and jump, cavorting across the canvas, or swoop in from the wings—from offstage, “real” terrain. And while some are punk priestesses, still others are graffiti guerrillières armed with spray cans. Whoever’s on the scene, supposedly, is there.

The Artforum December 1981 issue featured a landmark essay about the East Village gallery scene of the early 1980s by Rene Ricard. Asking the question “What is it that makes something look like art?”, the essay is nowadays considered a seminal text in contemporary art criticism.

Rene Ricard revises his opinion of Julian Schnabel's work in his latest Artforum article that is full of praise: "I never cared for Julian’s work and still ain’t crazy about the drawings. When I saw the first plate however I realized that here was something I had to come to terms with, that I somehow had a responsibility to it, pushing as it did so much else into the back of my mind, as a new love will erase a difficult love one has been battling. And now as the etiolated American hegemony withdraws we see, as Judy Rifka sees, a great world of art blooming in perfection and Julian wielding his great artillery in the setting of the American sun."

Judy Rifka is contributing a large scale triptych ot New Art II: Surfaces/Textures, the second in a series of Penthouse exhibitions presenting new perspectives in contemporary art.

Eclecticism—not to be confused with this year’s fashion—informs Judy Rifka’s painting from the series, “80 Views of West Broadway.” Rifka doesn’t rehash old points, though her approach shows a careful consideration of color and form. The catch is that the work appears very contemporary, since its “accessibility” carries a distinctly New Wave sensibility.

Judy Rifka takes an Artforum Centerfold 4 page spread in the February 1980 issue.

Rooms at MoMA P.S.1 explores works by artists such as Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Daniel Buren, Walter De Maria, Joseph Kosuth, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Judy Rifka, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Richard Tuttle and Lawrence Weiner.

Artforum's May 1975 issue features Susan Heinemann's review of Judy Rifka's latest paintings

Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe reviews Judy Rifka's, Gerald Horn's and Joshua Neustein's shows at Bykert Gallery, O.K. Harris Gallery and Rina Gallery in the Artforum, April 1974 feature