Sounds like art

Tsabar flits between various artistic disciplines, and there are physical passages in the show that give you a sense of space, and get you to spread your tactile, aural and emotional sensibilities.

By BARRY DAVIS
“Transitions 2” (photo credit: CARY WHITTIER)
“Transitions 2”
(photo credit: CARY WHITTIER)
Naama Tsabar has paid her dues. The 34-year-old New York-based Israeli artist has accrued plenty of street level credentials on her way to putting on exhibitions like her current show, “Transitions 2,” at the Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv.
The titular shifts could refer to all kinds of movement. For starters, Tsabar flits between various artistic disciplines, and there are physical passages in the show that give you a sense of space, and get you to spread your tactile, aural and emotional sensibilities.
Tsabar has been living in the Big Apple for the past eight years and, by all accounts, she seems to be doing pretty well out there in the big wide world.
The first installment of the Transitions series took place in Mexico earlier this year, and her burgeoning bio features appearances at such A-lister venues as the Guggenheim Museum and MOMA in New York, and at various major locations around the world, including Milan, London, Paris and Berlin, in addition to Tel Aviv Museum and Haifa Museum. She also has considerable official kudos under her belt, including four Israeli Education Ministry Outstanding Achievement Awards and an Artis Fellowship from Columbia University in New York.
Artist Naama Tsabar (photo credit: GUY BEN-ARI)
Artist Naama Tsabar (photo credit: GUY BEN-ARI)
On entering the expansive basement display area at Dvir, you get an immediate sense of tan industrial ambiance. The pristine whitewashed vertical and horizontal continuum is interspersed by items that, at first glance, seem to come out of some throwback futuristic lab. There are large canvas-based rectangles dotted around the place, overlaid with stretched wiring of various hues, and volume buttons stationed at various junctures in the linear cable milieu. There is also an unmistakable buzz in the air – not of the virtual energy variety, but of an almost palpable incessantly audible ilk.
“All the works are interconnected, and the microphones, which are called Barricade, are connected to these canvases,” Tsabar notes, by way of explaining the incessant murmur which, if you pay attention to it, could be quite irksome.
Tsabar suggest that the noise could be a metaphor for various challenging aspects of our lives. “There is defiance of all sorts in the world, in art, in music – and there are political aspects, too.
There is too much electricity, too much sound in our lives. Everything produces a buzzing sound. You may not notice the noise an air conditioner makes, but it also puts out a buzzing sound.”
While the aforementioned sonic backdrop was not premeditated – it seems there was a technical hitch over the linkup with the amplifier – it does not get on your nerves, and you are quickly drawn into the visual and musical aesthetics on offer. The exhibition, like some of Tsabar’s previous shows, including her 2014 showing at the Guggenheim, “Blood Makes Noise,” has a very musical component. It opened a week and a half ago with a concert in which she and several other musicians performed using some of the works in the display.
Three of the items are eminently playable.
The foundation material is thick industrial felt – in burgundy, purple and gray – with the felt slab pierced near one corner by a piano string that is stretched taut and secured further up the felt. As each work is connected to the amplifier, the string can be strummed, hit and manipulated to produce musical notes, and actual melodies, should one so wish. The sound you produce – and visitors can play on the piano wires as they wish – reverberates impressively in the cavernous space. You can also maneuver the felt base to produce a reverb effect. It imbues the exhibition with a feeling of a live musical creation, and it’s also great fun.
The slightly furry substance was a given for Tsabar.
“Felt connects historically with works art, by people like Joseph Beuys [who once draped a grand piano in gray felt], and [now 85-year-old American Minimalist artist] Robert Morris,” Tsabar explains.
“Felt also brings you to musical instruments.” Pianos, drums and xylophones all incorporate felt. “It is also very alluring, and strokable. It invites you touch it.”
Before she decided to devote all her working hours to producing tangible works of art, Tsabar did time as a singer and guitarist in a punk rock band, and also earned a crust as a waitress.
Her rock upbringing remains a pillar of evolving oeuvre.
“For me, in 85% of my works, music is a very important component. That is connected with my past as a musician.
When I lived in Israel I worked in a band and with lots of other musicians.
I think that also predates my time as a professional musician. Music, you know, transports you to other places. You can be somewhere, and then you suddenly hear music that takes you to another place and another time. As a young girl growing up far away from Tel Aviv, music was a very important part of my life. That was my way of getting to know the world from my bedroom.”
Today, the world gets to know a lot about Tsabar through the sounds she creates.
Tsabar proffers the sound dimension through all kinds of senses. The gray canvas works are the result of disemboweling jobs she did on a bunch of Behringer amplifiers. They somehow convey a close to two-dimensional sense of the filtering and enhancement processing the original, complete, equipment performed.
Deconstructing and fashioning anew of musical apparatus is not a new notion for Tsabar. “Blood Makes Noise,” for example, featured a specially crafted twin guitar that could only be played by two people at the same time.
Tsabar says that music and the plastic arts are a natural confluence of her creative avenues.
“I listened to the pop and rock of the 1990s – the stuff my older siblings liked – and there was 1970s stuff, like Kate Bush and Queen. So, when art took over more and more of my life, in my late teens, music and art simply interfaced.”
“Transitions 2” portrays all kinds of musical references, some of which may not have been entirely intentional. Barricade, for instance, comprises two sets of four mikes. The gaffer-tape-covered wires leading off from the mikes to the amplifying equipment create groups of four parallel black lines across the white floor. This creates an image of sheet music, and invites visitors – should they so wish – to add the missing notation of some imaginary musical work. It is an entertaining idea that adds to the exhibition experience.
Tsabar is more than happy for members of the public to get in on the act, and lay their inquisitive hands on the piano strings, but that will require a proactive mind-set.
“I don’t put notices up here telling people they can play on the piano strings,” says the artist. “They have to discover that for themselves.”
Considering our tendency as Israelis to check out borders in our daily lives and often overstep them, that shouldn’t be a problem.
“Transitions 2” closes on December 3. For more information: (03) 604-3003 and dvirgallery.com/