Naama Tsabar: Friction

Nazarian / Curcio is pleased to present Friction, an exhibition by New York-based artist Naama Tsabar. This will be her third solo exhibition at the gallery, on view from September 21 through November 2. 

Building upon two major series explored in her current exhibition titled Estuaries, on view at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, her exhibition Friction will include new sound-based sculptures from the artist’s Works on Felt series as well as a new architectural intervention from her Gaffer Wall (Twilight) series. Tsabar will also debut a new series of ready-made sculptures using reconfigured instrument bows.

Tsabar’s works operate at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, and music. Her practice is inextricably linked to the nature of performance, both in her sculptures and architectural installations, as well as in her highly choreographed collaborative sound performances. Her latest exhibition explores these modalities across three distinct series that investigate what Tsabar sees as foundational elements of her performances: light, sound, and friction.

The exhibition’s title, Friction, refers to the action of sounding a string with a bow, creating resistance between the hair of the bow and the string of an instrument to produce sound. The show features a new series of sculptures made from reconfigured, ready-made bows, transforming a centuries-old performative tool. Tsabar has also used bows to elicit sound in performances with her ongoing series of Works on Felt. However, in this new body of work, the bows are stripped from their functional essence as a tool at the service of sound and are instead turned into a sculptural object in which materials––horsehair and wood, ––become the predominant aesthetic factors. The bow configuration is disrupted as Tsabar diverts the usual flow of the bow hair, from a closed loop on a single bow, to create continuity across two or three different bows. The resulting vocabulary of shapes, lines, and forms—potentially endless in configuration—possesses a sensual and bodily presence. 

Tsabar’s ongoing series of Works on Felt takes the form of minimalist wall sculptures made of felt, carbon fiber, epoxy, piano string, microphones, and guitar amps. But unlike the austerity of earlier minimalism, Tsabar’s Works on Felt  beckon touch, becoming activated by performers and viewers strumming the piano string or touching the felt, each amplified by a contact microphone and output by an amplifier. In these newest works, pitch can be modified by adjusting the tension of the piano string and reconfiguring the very shape of the felt. Inspired by the desert landscape of the American Southwest and Tsabar’s birth country of Israel, her newest variations of Works on Felt usher in a new color palette of rich copper and delicate sand. 

For Friction, Tsabar has created a monumental wall-based architectural intervention titled Twilight (Gaffer Wall), a companion to the one presented in her exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof. This work is a curved wall covered in strips of gaffer tape, the same ubiquitous material used to mask cables on theater and venue stages. The utilitarian materials, often associated with unseen backstage labor, shifts from its hidden location on the stage floor to a gallery wall, where it becomes illuminated as a primary aesthetic material. The tape, along with the architectural intervention of rounding the corner between the two walls, transforms this section of the gallery into a nocturnal vail that both conceals and reveals. One of the Works on Felt is hung on the surface of Twilight (Gaffer Wall), highlighting the tension and difference between the two artworks’ surfaces, one slick and reflective, the other soft and absorbing.

In addition to Twilight (Gaffer Wall) are a new series of individual, monochromatic gaffer wall works that continue Tsabar’s investigation into the visible and invisible. The black, semi-reflective surface of the gaffer works changes in relation to the way the light hits the piece, the incisions made in the tape, and the location of the viewer.  These artworks refuse to be confined to a single category, borrowing from elements of painting, drawing, and sculpture. They bridge the functional and the visual, merging art historical references from color field painting to minimalism while also acknowledging, through the meticulous act of layering, the hidden labor in performance. 

Friction is a comprehensive overview of Tsabar’s multifaceted practice, presenting new examples of the ongoing bodies of work for which the artist is known. Her newest series of bow sculptures offer a deeper insight into Tsabar’s thinking in regards to material, tension, transformation and play. Between the abstract qualities of art and music, Tsabar is able to combine the intangible nature of sound with the physical sense of touch. By engaging the architecture in which her artworks are shown, and relying on performers to activate the work, Tsabar creates a fully embodied experience for the viewer, prompting them to reflect on the very structures that condition their perception.

Naama Tsabar received her MFA from Columbia University in 2010. Solo exhibitions and performances of Tsabar have been presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Hamburger Banhof National Gallery of Contemporary Art (Berlin), The Bass Museum (Miami), Museum of Art and Design (New York), The High Line (New York), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Connecticut), Nasher Museum (Durham, NC), Kunsthaus Baselland (Switzerland), Palais De Tokyo (Paris), Prospect New Orleans, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Herziliya Museum for Contemporary Art in Israel, MARTE-C (El Salvador), CCA Tel Aviv (Israel), Faena Buenos Aires, Frieze Projects New York, Kasmin Gallery (New York), Paramo Gallery (Guadalajara), Dvir Gallery (Israel and Brussels), Spinello Projects (Miami), Nazarian / Curcio (Los Angeles). Selected group exhibitions featuring Tsabar’s work include The Andy Warhol Museum (New York), The Jewish Museum of Belgium, Moody Center for the Arts (Houston), Ballroom Marfa, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Elevation 1049 Gstaad (Switzerland), TM Triennale, Hasselt Genk Belgium, ‘Greater New York’ 2010 at MoMA PS1, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Belgium), The Bucharest Biennale for Young Artists, Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard, Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg), ExtraCity in Antwerp (Belgium). 

Tsabar’s work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Art In America, ArtReview, ARTnews, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Frieze, Bomb Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, Wire, and Whitewall, among others. Tsabar is a two-time recipient of an Artis Grant, 2014 and 2010; a two-time recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Grant, 2009 and 2005; the 2009-2010 recipient of the Joan Sovern Award from Columbia University; 2012 Grantee of The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award; and held residency in 2012 at The Fountainhead Residency in Miami.

Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, A4 Arts Foundation, Centre Pompidou, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, The Bass Museum, Kadist Collection, Jimenez-Colón Collection, Tel Aviv Museum, Israel Museum, and Coleccion Dieresis.