Body of Knots | Jane Schiffhauer

 

May 9–29, 2013 | Littman Gallery

Reception: Thursday, May 9, 2013 | 6–9pm

Jane Schiffhauer’s installation of ethereal forms created by handmade undulating nets, ropes, foliage, human hair, and found objects explores the intricacies of our corporeal being in relationship to our surrounding environment.  Body of Knots highlights the anxieties between what it means to be human and what it means to live in contemporary society through use of conflicting materials of hard and soft, living and dead.

In this ongoing body of work, rope serves as a fluid metaphor to express ideas of the body, relationships and gender.  Schiffhauer seeks materials that are often contradictory in their nature as well as their purpose in order to destablilize widely accepted notions of gender and the body.  For example, ropes may bind as well as create a way of escape and nets may be used as a trap or to offer security.  Through thoughtful recontextualization of these found objects we find that the signifier is not always the signified.

Jane Schiffhauer is a Portland-based artist and arts worker.  She received her MFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art and has been included in numerous exhibitions locally and nationally.  Schiffhauer has most recently shown at the Center of Contemporary Art in Seattle, Vermont Studio Center, and Place Gallery in Portland.