Across Boundaries of Sound
Naama Tsabar’s carbon fiber felt pieces have a visual resonance that alone would suffice in deeming them worthy art objects. But viewing the pieces merely as cut and manipulated colorful felt sculptures, shaped and complemented by piano string, would ignore at least 50 percent, if not more, of the work’s content.
The fact is, the Israeli-born artist’s felt works, “Transition” pieces, and dismembered guitar pieces are most fully realized when the artist herself is manipulating their aural qualities, plucking the strings, tapping the surface of the miked felt pieces, and otherwise interacting with them physically.
In her “Transboundary #2” installation at the Fireplace Project in Springs, the three felt works, preparatory drawings, guitar piece, and “Transition” wall sculpture lack her presence, but still offer viewers a chance to interact with them, and to create their own performance art in the process.
A wine-colored felt piece with a slice one-third up the sculpture and about halfway into it has a piano string mounted in that lower third, which appears to pull the end of the piece inward to create a taut curve. Inside, she has planted tiny microphones. They attach to an amplifier placed nearby. It broadcasts the sound created when the surface is tapped or beaten like a bongo. The string can be plucked, strummed, or rubbed with a bow or other object along its length to create different tones.
The two other felt pieces sharing space in this gallery do very much the same in different colors, different slices, and different configurations and forms. Their tones and ranges are also quite different.
In these works, Ms. Tsabar uses multiple layers of felt to create varied thicknesses. Into these layers she introduces sheets of carbon fiber and epoxy to give them their stiff structure. The result is a strong and durable sculpture with a lovely tactile surface.
Given her training and M.F.A. from Columbia University, the obvious allusions to Joseph Beuys, Lucio Fontana, Barry Le Va, and Robert Morris are all valid. Yet she approaches her work from a feminine perspective, creating curves from hard edges, and removes them from a hierarchical context so that anyone can approach, touch, and even “play” them. Indeed, that must happen in order for the works to be fully realized.
The same motivation is evident in her “Transition” and broken guitar work in the other gallery. Ms. Tsabar was a punk rock musician and bartender. As such she witnessed nightly how gender roles played out in both occupations. With “Melody of Certain Damage #1,” she bolts portions of a broken electric guitar to the floor some six feet apart and stretches long strings between them along with a microphone. Included in the piece is usually an amplifier. In this installation, she has connected it instead to one of her “Transition” pieces, constructed of wood, canvas, and deconstructed amplifier parts that she has artfully reassembled to produce sound.
Her easy way with the hardware and technical aspects of making these pieces functional is enough to make them worth noticing. Yet adding to their practicality is the wholly original approach she takes in blowing up the stereotypes associated with guitars and rock music. As one grasps the sophistication of their inner workings, they seem at once superficially easy and exceedingly complex.
Rounding out the show is a series of white preparatory “drawings” that function more as paper maquettes. On their own, they might appear rather basic and bland: white paper with thread on a white wall. In this context, however, they gain architectural importance and seem like structures not too far removed from an Alice Aycock sculpture.
Ms. Tsabar’s career has taken off quite a bit in the past couple of years, and this year alone she has had six solo exhibitions, with an acclaimed stint in Basel, Switzerland, in the spring. It is well worth taking in this intimate view of her work right in our backyard that offers a chance to say you knew her when.
The exhibition is open through Sunday.