Liz Jaff: Wallflower

Liz Jaff: Wallflower Exhibition Installation view
©2017 Paul Takeuchi

Liz Jaff’s Wallflower, her third exhibition with the gallery, explores reflections on longing, vulnerability, inner strength and the changing nature of relationships.  Consisting of large-scale ink on paper drawings and a time-based installation of ink and dissolving paper the two bodies of work offer different perceptions of time passed and passing, highlighting the ephemerality of experience and the intangible nature of loss. They ask the viewer to experience time by capturing a particular moment or watching it undo itself in the present.

Influenced by both photographic contact sheets and filmstrips, the large-scale ink on paper drawing series, titled Black Magic 1, 2, 3, etc., arrest action, seemingly capturing motion in space. Their stop-action character invokes a sense of something caught in a moment, which has now passed, although we are not privy to the complete action or its final outcome.  Conceptually these works are influenced by the drama and passion in Frederico Garcia Lorca’s writings on duende and in both Flamenco and Butoh performance.

Heartbreaker (ink, bottles, tubing and Aquasol) is a meditation on awareness of passing time and the inclination to draw out a moment prolonging its existence. Three suspended vessels containing ink and fitted with tubes slowly produce a steady drip onto what appears to be a stack of paper below.   The paper is actually a material named Aquasol engineered to dissolve in water and is slowly decomposing with each drip from the apparatus above.  The ink causes the work to corrode and deteriorate over time and acts as metaphor to experience the inevitability of change and an ultimate conclusion.

The Heartbreaker installation is made possible by the generous support of the Material Connexion and the Aquasol Corporation.