Filmmaker Sam Vladimirsky has made a short film about Lesley for Musee Magazine, featuring live footage of Experiments In Electrostatics.

Legacy in Light

THE ART OF LESLEY SCHIFF

Lesley Schiff revolutionized the photocopier from being an office tool to just another instrument in the artist's arsenal. Rather than addressing the tool in her work, Schiff instead uses the photocopier like a paintbrush to realize her vision. Once a painter, Schiff says: “I never intended to stop painting. I just decided to start painting with a modern tool. Working with the color laser printer keeps you in your culture. It's like America. Plugged in. Electronic. Direct." Painting with light, Schiff's body of work offers her vision of the cycle of our existence: man, woman, child, civilization, nature, technology. More recent works challenge the viewer to understand the concept of eye-levels and perspectives, reinventing the way we see. Schiff's work was the Metropolitan Museum of Art's first digital acquisition, and most recently, was featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art in "Experiments in Electrostatics".

CANON, COPIES, CONSTRUCTION - Photo-Copy Art Defined in the 19th-21st centuries

“ Rembrandt was not great for the quality of his pencils, so too, Schiff distances herself from her medium of choice and elevates the status of photocopy art from kitsch……….. “

“ ………. Perhaps the cycle between man and technology was destined to be represented by an artist like Schiff, originally a painter, who redefined photomechanical reproduction sequences to produce work that does not rely on its process for meaning, but instead, allows the artist to realize entirely new ways of seeing.”

—Samuel L. Vladimirsky

6 May, 2018