Ruth Bachofner Gallery is pleased to present Scholar Books, an exhibition of work by Venice,California-based artist Jean Edelstein. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, January 16, 4-6pm.

The history of Chinese painting, specifically that of the handscroll, is centered on the format of the paintings. Unfurling a scroll was an intimate and anticipatory experience; each part of the scroll revealed something new as a continuous depiction of a narrative unfolded. This revelatory experience was ceremonial and the paintings were handled with care as the viewer admired and studied each section, from right to left. Then, they repeated the process to continue the narrative and discover new visual progressions.

The Chinese tradition of painted handscrolls inspires this series by allowing the format to reflect and maintain the integrity of the narration and movement within performance and the natural world. Jean Edelstein's books can be viewed as an uninterrupted panorama, just as each page can be witnessed individually, isolating and focusing on a moment in time.

Jean Edelstein has been performing for the last 30 years, working with dancers on stage in front of an audience, translating the movement in real time, into painted line and color. She has developed that performative practice into working in Chinese Scholar accordion books. Edelstein observes and records the movements of dancers and musicians, as well as the natural choreography she finds in the visual rhythms within nature. The format of the accordion book allows the dynamic fluidity of movement to develop, to reveal a rhythmic progression with its expansive energy preserved, page-by-page and as a whole.

Edelstein draws with quick, expressive gestures to convey the immediacy of performative energy and the more subtle cadences in the textures of plants. Without preconceptions of the structure of her forms, she translates movements into drawings as they occur. Like the Chinese handscrolls, the accordion books are a narrative experience with a beginning and an end. They are records of moments in time that reveal themselves as revelations — to both viewer and artist.

Jean Edelstein has had performances and exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, including Trieste, Italy, Tokyo, Japan, Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Bonn, Germany. Her artworks are part of permanent and public collections in America, Europe, and South America.