Kembra Pfahler: Sit-Ins

Sit-Ins was an exhibition of butt prints by Kembra Pfahler, which opened at Deitch Projects on October 4, 2008. The exhibition coincided with the release of Beautalism, a book produced by Deitch Projects that documented the artist’s recent work.

Kembra Pfahler’s butt prints were created in a straightforward manner. She applied a layer of paint to her rear and plopped it onto a sheet of paper. The artworks used the same body paint as that worn by her band, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, during their glamorous theatrical rock performances. Each Sit-In was comprised of three ass impressions in approved Karen Black colors, stacked on top of each other in the shape of a “V”. Kembra viewed the V form as “a new inverted golden mean,” and its shape was meant to suggest her celebrated performance piece Wall of Vagina where the colorfully naked Girls of Karen Black piled on top of each other with legs spread and vaginas visible.

The Sit-Ins were born out of a desire to expound upon and interpret “body work” in the tradition of the Vienna Actionists and the formal qualities of Yves Klein. Instead of being acted upon like the female figures of Klein’s Monotone Symphony or sullied as in Hermann Nitsch’s Degradation of a Female Body, Degradation of a Venus, Kembra used her own semi-naked form to make her mark.

Beautalism focused on the performances staged for the 2008 Whitney Biennial and those that took place at Deitch Projects over the two years before this exhibition. It also provided a behind-the-scenes look at Kembra’s Sit-Ins and their installation at the Whitney.

Kembra was born in Hermosa Beach, California and lives and works in New York City. In addition to the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Kembra’s work was featured in It’s Not Only Rock ‘N’ Roll, Baby! curated by Jerome Sans at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in the summer of 2008 and Womanizer at Deitch Projects in 2007. Kembra Pfahler and The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black were Deitch Project’s featured performance artists at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2007.