Rowan University Art Gallery West
A multimedia, motion-activated installation by Sculpture Professor Jeanne Jaffe, inspired by the life of electrical engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and additional funds from the Center for Emerging Visual Artists.

Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 10 AM – 5 PM, Saturday 12 – 4PM
Reception: Thursday, October 8, 5 – 8 p.m.
Artist Presentation & Panel Discussion: Thursday, October 8, 5 p.m.

In “Elegy for Tesla,” Jaffe integrates technology with sculpture, evocative soundscapes and theatrical sets to create a psychological dreamscape and biographical narrative.

Jaffe’s work often selects historical figures that embody disparate psychological characteristics. The choice of Tesla as a subject was driven by his historic contributions to wireless communications technologies that brought him fame and celebrity, and without which our current digital world would not have been possible. Tesla’s life follows a mythological trajectory, which Jaffe explores in this installation.

The installation includes a variety of three-dimensional objects, with imagery culled from Tesla’s inventions and explorations. These include life-size figurative sculptures of Tesla as a young man and in his later years. Additionally, digital technology has been used to develop speech soundscapes, which convey musical tonality to suggest a range of emotions and psychological states; and stop-motion video animation depicts Tesla as a marionette acting out scenes from his historical arc. There is also an immersive video projection of Niagara Falls, where Tesla invented the first hydro-electrical power station.

Jaffe’s work comes to fruition through an essential and supportive collaboration with Dr. John Schmalzel and the Engineering Clinic at the university’s Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering, along with principal engineer Philip Mease and engineers Anthony Merlino and Jason Meyer, with additional assistance from Mario Leone and numerous engineering students who designed and fabricated the motion-activated equipment that makes the sculptures move and talk.

Jaffe is the recipient of fellowship grants from the Gottlieb Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Independence Foundation, Leeway Foundation and Virginia A. Groot Foundation, in addition to being a finalist for the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She has had artist residency fellowships across the country and in Japan. Jaffe has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and is included in numerous private and public collections.
Rowan University Art Gallery West
201 Mullica Hill Road
Glassboro, NJ 08028
United States