“I think of this exhibition as a jam session between an artist, a musician and a tap dancer. You can join in with whatever you bring.”

Stefan Saffer had the pleasure of seeing Derek Bailey perform live on three occasions before the jazz musician’s untimely death in 2006. Each show was a completely unique and pure experience, inspiring the artist to strive to recreate in his own work the intense momentum of thought, experience, knowledge and wisdom he felt watching Bailey. This initial inspiration led to the eventual “collaboration” one guitar, two shoes and countless holes.

For this exhibition, Saffer creates and arranges his intricate cut out and folded works on paper around a video performance of Derek Bailey and legendary tap dancer Will Gaines. The installation, dynamic as a whole, is comprised of individual works, each with its own momentum and mood, an improvisation inspired by, and in homage to the experience of losing oneself in ones art while inviting others to lose themselves in the final creation.

Stefan Saffer’s work has been exhibited worldwide at galleries including Kate MacGarry in London, Andrea Rosen in New York and Villa Grisebach Gallery in Berlin. He earned his MFA from Goldsmiths, London and has received several prestigious grants and awards including Art for Architecture Award from the Royal Society of Architecture UK and the Whitney ISP Program. Currently, Saffer lives and works in Berlin.

Running concurrently with one guitar, two shoes and countless holes, new paintings by Jill Simonsen will be on view in the gallery’s project room. Simonsen travels extensively throughout the United States photographing the architectural landscape. She then breaks the images down to their purest forms to create her bold, flat acrylic on canvas interpretations. Simonsen earned her BFA from Penn State University. She now lives and works blocks from the gallery in New York City’s Lower East Side.