"Karen Schifman is a mixed-media artist: she arranges vintage objects and images culled from various sources to produce compositions that address ideas about her personal history and female identity in general. Her aesthetic vocabulary is rich and varied, employing fragments of old photographs, details from favored paintings, and a range of domestic detritus discovered in antique stores, estate sales and flea markets. All of these are combined to create complex poetic compositions that invite viewer engagement.
Schifman deploys collage and assemblage (which can be understood as three-dimensional collage) to tell stories about herself, her family, and the history of women in Western society. She incorporates paints (often watercolor) and stains into her artworks, then augments them with found images, objet trouvé, and has a particular fondness for vintage lace. The process of the “hunt” for art materials often inspires the conceptual content of her artworks.
Although she only began making art a few years ago, Schifman has always been a creative. Her years as an art historian, interior designer and fashion maven demand the same sophisticated “eye” that leads her to current work as an artist. Pieces of patterned wallpaper and slips of cloth recall household design from years past. Ribbons and lace echo her engagement in chic attire. Her art history training is evident in the figures and faces gleaned from reproductions of historic paintings: two eyes from a Flemish portrait, a Renaissance woman’s hand holding a handkerchief, flowers from a memento mori still life.
Schifman is particularly inspired by Surrealism. For example, her Ode to Oppenheim, is inspired by Swiss- born Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985), the Surrealist sculptor best known for her Object (1936), a teacup and plate covered in gazelle fur. With its incorporation of fur, a shoe, and a wooden hand covered in gold, this example echoes the historic artist’s oeuvre. Another example is Still Life with Red Shoe recalling Oppenheim’s My Nursemaid (1936) with two high heels tied together like a stuffed turkey on a platter. In these examples and others that play with the unexpected juxtapositions of objects and images, viewers are compelled to consider the interactions of the constituent components and how they illuminate the significance of our material culture.
In addition to her larger works, Schifman has produced a series of miniature books (3” X 3”). She rejects traditional linear narratives in favor of poetic fragments that point to but do not limit meaning. This strategy compels viewers to engage with her compositions, putting together clues and inferences in order to complete their understanding of the content. French Dada master Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) argued that both the artist and the viewer are necessary for the completion of an artwork. Similarly, Robert Rauschenberg sought to leave the interpretation of his works to the viewer. His works, like Schifman’s collages, are prime examples of the interactive nature of contemporary art. We visually explore her work and recognize her visual “clues” are leading us to creating our own meanings." Betty Ann Brown, 2024.
