PAPER: Screens: Enabling a Sequential Reading of Art

The folding screen format in Sandy Bleifer's art is a means of representing Time and Space in a static medium.

The folds encompass space and add a greater three-dimensionality to textured surfaces. Folding also enables the work to stand independently as sculptural objects. This enhances the "realism" of images such as mountains and clouds.

The folding screen, as an articulated surface for an image, calls upon the viewer to experience the image linearly, rather than simultaneously as one does in confronting a painting in the conventional rectangular format. This approximates the experience of viewing dance or theater as well as music as a revelation of evolving meaning. Reading left to right, the viewer enters a work in the screen format by coming in at the beginning - at a seminal idea - and experiences a progression in the time it takes to move along to the right. The screen format also enables the representation of the passage of time on a given subject (e.g. gradual change of lighting from day to night) and a sequence of juxtapositions of images on facing pages.