JILL BAROFF The Edge of the World at Bartha Contemporary Private View : Thursday April 7th 2011

Image:Jill Baroff Grill, 2011 Oil-pastel on Japanese gampi mounted on rag 81 x 81 cm

Bartha Contemporary is pleased to present The Edge of the World, an exhibition of new works by Brooklyn-based artist, Jill Baroff. This will be the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery and features a large-scale wall installation, Where I Leave Off and You Begin , alongside a series of new ‘floating line’ drawings. This will be the final exhibition at Bartha Contemporary’s Lancaster Road Space.

Where I Leave Off and You Begin, an incised, elliptical wall intervention is characterized by a shape-shifting quality that defies architectural weight and rectangular structure. It revisits themes the artist first explored in a series of site-specific installations in New York City in the mid 1990’s, which examined the line between wall drawing and architectural intervention. The shape is fugitive, movable, and closer to being understood as a transcendent experience than as a built object. In contrast to the earlier work, the current installation does not adhere to the traditional notion of a fixed, site-specific work of art, but can be de-installed and moved to its next location.

Image:Jill Baroff Triptych : Mechanic’s Dream, 2011 Graphite on Japanese gampi mounted on rag Each 81 x 81 cm

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Baroff continues to work with Japanese gampi in the ‘floating line’ drawings; a series of process-driven works that manage to incorporate both an element of chance and highly refined composition. Each drawing begins with the same premise: the edge of the paper is marked and then is cut free and allowed to form line drawings in the space of the remaining field of the sheet of paper. The outcome is simple, lyrical forms determined by a line’s width, load of material and chance; resulting in surprisingly specific archetypes and structural epiphanies.

Jill Baroff has been exhibiting internationally for many years. Her work is represented in numerous important American and European Public and Private Collections. Notably the Museum of Modern Art New York; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge MA ; Menil Collection, Houston TX; Yale University Art Museum, New Haven CT; Museum Folkwang, Essen ; Kupferstichkabinet, Berlin; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Staedel Museum, Frankfurt.