The PAPER SERIES: New Art Book releases coming soon
Sandy Bleifer uses paper and figurative imagery to evoke social and political issues. Her work engages the audience via interactions with freestanding and wall hung sculptural installations. Her intention has been to bring about far-reaching social change by further involving the viewer/participant through adjunct programming and contemplation of the artwork. Using photographic documentation, she traversed the world of urban redevelopment to preserve neighborhoods and architectural features of historical and cultural significance.
The artist takes on topics such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust, mass migration, the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Trump era and the revitalization of historic buildings and neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
“When I was 45 years old, I was in an car accident on the freeway, the same age my mother was when she died in an automobile accident. A profound wake-up call about my own mortality, it prompted me to capture my physical essence. Using plaster molds of my face and parts of my body, I then formed paper sculptures depicting different aspects of my persona.”
Sandy Bleifer uses the folding screen as an architectural element in a room, as a pictorial device that provides a linear presentation of a subject through time, various lighting conditions and vistas and as a way to visually express shifts of thematic material in music compositions. Like the scroll, the folding screen format turns the simultaneous experience of viewing a painting into a process of revelation.