Liz Jaff

Fidget 2, 2011, Cut paper on board,
16 1/4" x 11 3/8" x 2"

Brooklyn, NY – September 19, 2011 – Liz Jaff creates installations and objects which reflect her personal impression of space and memory. She explores the structural attributes and aesthetic qualities intrinsic to paper that she cuts and folds into highly formal compositions in both objects and large-scale installations. Her ink drawings continue these investigations by diagramming folds using ink soaked cloth to make patterns on paper. This exhibition will feature new cut and folded paper pieces and ink on paper drawings produced at the artist’s studios in Greenwich Village and Southampton, NY.

Jaff began folding paper over 12 years ago. Through abstraction and repetition of architectural and natural forms, she makes environments and objects that convey the specific feeling and character of a place or event from her everyday life. The ephemeral, transitory nature of paper gives Jaff the perfect medium to characterize the fleeting feelings of her memory of time and space.

Circles serve as an interesting metaphor for memory and are a recurring motif in her work. The events of her everyday life take Jaff from home to work to studio, etc and always complete a circle by returning home. These commomplace activities are recorded as abstractions of cut and folded paper often with whimsical titles, like Tumble, Fidgit orGiggle.  Circles also allow her a formal tool to investigate the change of light and dark as two-dimensions are turned into three. When repeated these shapes constitute her reaction to the geometries of Sol Lewitt, Carl Andre and Agnes Martin.

Jaff’s ink on paper drawings continue her exploration into capturing impressions through abstraction. Whereas Jaff’s folded paper pieces investigate translating a two-dimensional plane into three-dimensional space, the ink drawings invert the process by using a three dimensional object to diagram a fold in two dimensions. These drawings begin with a circle of cloth dipped into ink and then pressed onto paper. The resulting impression is the source from which Jaff draws out a diagram of its folds, including the axes, whether real or invented. They are not precise diagrams of the process of folding paper but they do represent a record of a process. Although they are less architectural than either her objects or installations they are equally involved with space and especially memory.

Liz Jaff in a native of New York City and received her BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. She lives and works in New York City and Southampton, NY. This is her first exhibition with Robert Henry Contemporary.