Jeanne Jaffe

My sculptures function as a bridge between early somatic sensations and memories and the symbolic order of language. The creation of hybrid forms - fusions of animate and inanimate objects - invite recognition while remaining enigmatic. They refer to visual, tactile and auditory sensations which were felt before words could describe and thereby distance immediate experience. These early somatic experiences recall a form of cognition which corresponds to a pre-verbal state, where the distinction between things is not yet clear and where boundaries between identities are still fluid.

This indeterminacy or multi-determined quality of an object, memory, text or icon is the subject of my work. Shifts in scale, positioning, and changes of format alter the meaning of a form. How differently does one relate to the same object when it is 9 feet tall instead of 9 inches, or when it changes its position relative to other forms. The formats in which sculptures are contextualized effect meaning as well: multiple groupings or individual units, forms suspended and floating or stationary and grounded. Each provides a distinctive reading. An intuitive, ideographic language develops - a spill of memory and an open system of signs that is multivalent, mysterious and available to a multitude of meanings and associations.