P rojected shadows - When you see Szafran manipulating leaves cut out of zinc then applying their shape to paper, drawing the outlines on blue paper tracings, one thinks of the stratagems of Chinese shadow theatres and Javanese puppets. It is a whole fable carried from leaf to leaf based on an abuse of the senses, on illusion and on the essential emptiness of appearances. T he serpentine line. What matter that it traces its path around a real object, the curved timbers of a Thonet armchair, the coils of a Gaudi bench or the sinuous rail of a staircase. These are only the pretexts of an abstract game, of perfect mastery that enlivens the inanimate and that, with the vibration of the flagella, breathes the power of life into the inert.
S am Szafran lives and work in Paris.
J ean Clair, Director of the Paris Picasso Museum, is the commissioner of the exhibition and the author of the exhibition catalogue. Sam Szafran The Workshop street of Crussol with fildeferist, boxes of pastel and reflexions.