James Pfaff: Alex & Me

About

Amongst the many works in the show, the neon installation “Ever been changed by someone? immediately interrogates visitors on the importance of the autobiographical in his creative process. The show, a retrospective touching on the role of obsession in artistic research where the author utilises his archive and ephemera to help rebuild fractured memories. 

Alex & Me, the exhibition and book, were developed in a tandem process between James Pfaff & Francesca Seravalle. After the success of the book, published by Danilo Montanari Editore (2016) shortlisted at Cosmos – Rencontres d’Arles 2016 by Erik Kessels, Pfaff along with curator Seravalle reunite to bring the work reappraised in exhibition form. The exhibition will introduce unseen photographs, new mixed media installations, painted objects and a selection of Pfaff's collection of journals made over the period of the last two decades. The vast majority of pieces presented are unique and unreproducible and have an imperfect beauty likened to the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic so crucial to Pfaff: always reflecting the realities of transience and the imperfections of life.

Pfaff uses the photographic medium to allow him to find and analyse contamination and the many uncontrolled interventions playing out in the background of their trip - the lives of others, places and the political atmosphere in the United States during the Clinton era.