Miles Jaffe is a sculptor, architect, author and industrial designer whose work turns the everyday objects of artistic life into instruments of institutional critique. He grew up compulsively disassembling things, took a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1980, and still designs, engineers and fabricates every piece himself, in sheet metal, polymer, pigment and 3D-printed components.
Three bodies of work define the practice. Artists' Colors inflates paint tubes to absurdist scale and translates colour into idiom — black market, box office gold, area grey — with drips that obey gravity. Notes to Self uses giant pushpins to catalogue the competing strategies and abandoned manifestos of a working artist. Matchbooks advertises imagined businesses run by art-world icons: David Hockney offering pool services, Jackson Pollock working as a plumber.
Jaffe describes himself as a sardonic optimist, and cites Warhol's line that art is what you can get away with. Some of his work is installed upside down, which he offers as a reflection of his worldview. The results are parodies that are also, with irony intact, tributes.
His sculptures are held in private collections worldwide, and he has exhibited with galleries across the United States and Europe.
Available works are shown by appointment at 458 West Broadway. Write to sales@piperpoet.com.