Kembra Pfahler

Kembra Pfahler (b. 1961 in Hermosa Beach, California, United States) is an American performance artist, rock musician, film actress and filmmaker who lives and works in New York City.

Initially best known as the lead singer of the glam, punk, shock rock band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Pfahler’s artistic output has always merged music, performance art, sculpture, painting and drawing, attracting interest from the music world and artworld alike. 

On 30 May, Pfahler will open Rebel without a Cock, her second solo exhibition at East-London gallery Emalin. Pfahler is exhibiting the Femlin Series photographs as well as the monumental sculpture Disco Cock. The former is a collaboration with photographer Andrew Strasser, depicting Pfahler and her Girls of Karen Black as the mischievous eponymous character that was born from Leroy Neiman’s pen and which later gained notoriety as a comic strip in the American men’s lifestyle magazine Playboy. Disco Cock on the other side served many years as one of the most famous backdrops to her concerts, and is now exhibited in Europe for the first time. The sculpture is a collaboration between Kembra Pfahler, Urs Fischer and Spencer Sweeney.

On occasion of the opening, on Thursday 30 May, from 6-9pm, Pfahler will be performing with the Girls of Karen Black.

On Tuesday 28 May, Emalin and the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) will present a screening of films and video artworks at LADA. Following the screening, Kembra will be in conversation with curator and performer Phoebe Patey-Ferguson.

Pfahler’s recent exhibitions and performances include SHE WHO SAW BEAUTIFUL THINGS, The Kitchen (New York, NY, USA 2019); Sex Cells, Lethal Amounts (Los Angeles, US, 2019). Major solo exhibitions include 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 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); Dead Flowers, Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2010); and Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY, USA, 2008).

Categories: Featured Artist


Date Posted: 23 May 2019