Transitions #2 by Naama Tsabar

Dvir Gallery is happy to present Naama Tsabar’s solo show Transitions #2.
Continuing her ongoing “Work On Felt” sculptures, Tsabar moves the work from the floor to the wall with three new “Felt Variations”. The new wall-based pieces, draw on art-historical influences such as Joseph Beuys’s felt sculptures or Robert Morris’s cut-felt wall pieces. The material here subverts expectations: no longer the dampener of sound, but the resonating chamber itself. The audience is invited to breach the borders between one’s own body and the artwork – plucking the string, extending or shortening the curvature of the work omits sound while enabling an intimate experience between the object and its catalyst.
The Transition canvases are a body of work in which the artist has emptied out the inside components of guitar amplifiers and stage monitors, she then reinserts the elements as visual components onto linen canvases. The wires puncturing in and out of the fabric to create a visual composition. When connected to power, each canvas retains its functional role with a set sound and volume level. In the exhibition, three Transition works will be connected to the work “Barricade #2” , a work composed by a set of twelve microphones arranged in a triangle formation, each side's output is fed through a separate canvas in the space. Creating a sonic negative space within the borders of the triangle itself. The arrangement and structure of the microphone stands acts as both barrier and enabler as the performative space in “Barricade #2” is compressed both physically and sonically. The performer and performance are contained inside the border of the triangle, but upon activation the sound is funneled to the gallery walls, filling the architectural space of the gallery. The cables on the gallery floor double as a sketch or gallery plan of the transmitted sound.
The forth Transition work stays unconnected to any sound transmitting device. The dual existence of these pieces is essential to their understanding, as the canvases constantly move from one field of reading to the other (much like the Felt Variations). They are visually surreal as they hold a potential of sound and continuously shift, maintaining a constant state of transition.
Opening will take place October 29th, 10-13.
Tsabar and Kristin Mueller, a New York-based musician, will join a group of local musicians in activating the works for a space-specific performance at 12:00 day of the opening.
Naama Tsabar (b. Israel, 1982) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Exhibitions include: “Blood Makes Noise,” Guggenheim, New York (solo), “Propagation (Opus 3),” Museo de Arte de El Salvador, (solo), “Greater New York 2010” PS1 MoMA, and “Propagation (Opus 2),” Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (3 person), “Composition 20”, High Line Art, NYC, “Without”, Frieze Projects, NYC. Selected features and reviews include The New York Times, New York Magazine, Artforum, Frieze, ArtReview, Art in America, Art Asia Pacific, The Wire Magazine, Tom Tom, Billboard,
and Fader.