Naama Tsabar articulates a visual vocabulary for sound in “Friction,” her solo return to Los Angeles. For instance, in Continuity in Two #2,Continuity in Three #1,and Continuity in Four #1, all 2024, the artist manipulates the bows of stringed instruments, rendering them incapable of making music. Elements such as sticks and lengths of horsehair are reconfigured in unexpected ways to produce elegantly sculptural abstractions. Freed from sonic functionality, the refangled objects are arranged on the gallery’s walls like rare taxidermies.Some of these pieces—which trouble the relationships between visibility, silence, and stillness—call to mind letters of ancient languages or cuneiform script.
This presentation complements “Estuaries,” the artist’s show at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof that came down in September. At Nazarian / Curcio, Tsabar created a companion installation, Twilight (Gaffer Wall) 2007/2024, that expanded her repository of “shape-shifters”: Minimalist, interactive instruments made out of felt, piano strings, and microphones. The workincludes a wall covered by strips of black gaffer tape, a camouflaging material used by museums and galleries to mask cables so as to not upset an exhibition’s overall aesthetics. Yet Tsabar brings the tape front and center for this piece, accentuating its various formal and functional properties, resulting in a dramatic setting that simultaneously responds to and absorbs light and sound.
Naama Tsabar, Continuity in Four #1, 2024, bow, horsehair, hardware, 51 3/4 x 13 1/4 x 2".
Although Tsabar has been exploring the texture of sound throughout her career, “Friction” emphasizes concerns that were less obvious in previous works, including the idea of language as form and the fate of communication when it becomes incoherent, opaque, or disconnected from its origins. The artist’s spare sculptural works, made from repurposed objects and materials, outline a space for different types of sensorial encounters that are both melancholy and playful.
. 
