Artist: Naama Tsabar
Exhibition title: Dedicated
Venue: Dvir Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
Date: October 25 – December 8, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Dvir Gallery
Dvir Gallery is delighted to present the first solo show in Brussels and the third with the gallery, of Naama Tsabar, Israeli artist, based in NYC. The exhibition will feature four bodies of work all in which the artist employs methods of dismantling and reconstructing as a means to question the structures around us while proposing new ways of moving forward.
Dedicated is a diptych spanning from the entry through the last room in the exhibition. In this work the artist invited Shifra Shalit (owner of Dvir Gallery) to list names of historical and/or contemporary female identifying and gender non-conforming artist that have influenced her over the course of her life. The list is then transcribed in Tsabar’s handwriting onto the gallery wall. The wall with the list on it is cut out from the architecture leaving a hole that remains throughout the duration of the exhibition. The cut out wall is then hung at the entry to the gallery. This work quite literally cuts into the structures around us, dedicating them to those artists, who have been historically overlooked, forgotten or ignored.
An ongoing series of photographs will be debuted at the exhibition. In these works a female body penetrates and intertwines with walls in the artist’s studio. The motives of femininity, gender, disruption, and destruction are recurring throughout the exhibition.
“I don’t like authority, to be framed, restricted” Tsabar says. Her works break down the borders that were set for them. In Melody of Certain Damage, Tsabar presents sculptures of broken guitars on the gallery floor. She focuses on the moment following the iconic and climactic destruction of an electric guitar by mapping the pieces as they fell and reattaching strings to the shattered guitar pieces in an unconventional way, reinserting the pieces into a new working order. Those attending the exhibition will have a chance to experience this. Tsabar invites viewers to interact with her sculptures giving the work the potential to expand to a different field of action.
Tsabar has been researching the shift within a given physical space and field of reading that can happen through music and sound. For this exhibition Tsabar plugs the broken guitar sculptures to the Transition canvases, a series in which the artist has inverted amplifiers. By emptying out their inside parts and re-inserting the parts as visual components onto cotton and linen canvases, the sonic and visual components interpenetrate; electrical wires puncture in and out of the canvas to create a visual composition. When connected to power, each canvas retains its functional role with a set sound and volume level.
As audiences interact, the works’ legibility changes, as does the distance between object and subject – when the viewer stops in their tracks to interact with the works and activate them, they breach the borders between their own body and the art object, constituting both an intimate and performative relationship with the works and space.
Naama Tsabar creates sensually driven installations, performances, and sculptures that address the implicit gender roles and coded behaviour of music and nightlife, she appropriates and subverts the aggressive gestures of rock and roll and their associations with virility and power. Informed by her experiences as a musician in a punk band and as a bartender, Tsabar probes the culture of rock music from multiple angles, channelling the decadence of urban night culture and its association with danger, seduction, and subversion. She zooms in on objects and materials which hold a distinct functional purpose within bigger all-encompassing systems and experiences, inserting them into a new working order.
Tsabar’s work has been displayed in over 20 solo exhibitions worldwide including: Faena Art Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2018), Kunsthuas Baselland, Basel, Switzerland (2018), Museum of Art and Design, NY, US (2017), MARTE-C, El Salvador, El Salvador (2015), Guggenheim Museum, NY, US (2014), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2013, 2010). She has participated in numerous important group exhibitions, including Center for Contemporary art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2018), Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint -Martens-Latem, Belgium (2017), Prospect New Orleans 4 (2017), TM StadTriennale, This is the Sound of TM, Hasselt/Genk, Belgium (2016), CCS Bard Hessel Museum, NY (2015,2018), Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2014,2010), Extracity, Antwerp, Belgium (2011), Moma/P.S.1, NY, US (2010), The Bucharest Biennale for Young Artists, Bucharest, Romania (2008) among others.
Her performances took place in: The Watermill Center Galla benefit 2018, NY, US (2018), Soluna festival in Dallas, US (2018), Basilica Soundscape, Hudson NY, US (2017), DO DISTURB Festival, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2017), The High Line Art, NY, US (2016), Silencio, Paris, France (2014), Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw, Poland (2014), Tel Aviv museum, Tel Aviv, Israel (2013), Moma/PS1, NY, US (2010), Art Focus, Jerusalem, Israel (2009), Herziliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Herziliya, Israel (2006)
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, Shifra Shalit, 2018, sheetrock, wood, graphite, hole, inkjet print diptych with frame: 57 x 91.6 cm and framed print: 57 x 91.6 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Transition, 2016, wood, canvas, electronics, cables, knobs, speakers, 117 x 96.5 x 14 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Melody of Certain Damage #6, 2018, broken electric guitar, strings, microphone, screws and guitar amplifier, 144.8 x 99 x 6.3 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Untitled, 2012 – 2018, inkjet prints on photo rag paper, wooden frames, 97 x 67.8 cm (each), edition of 3 + 1 AP
Naama Tsabar, Untitled, 2018, inkjet print on photo rag paper, 97 x 67.8 cm, edition of 3 + 1 AP
Naama Tsabar, Melody of Certain Damage #9, 2018, broken electric guitar, strings, microphone, screws and guitar amplifier, 101.6 x 58.4 x 7.6 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Transition, 2016, wood, canvas, electronics, cables, knobs, speakers, 131 x 153.5 x 16.5 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Untitled, 2018, inkjet print on photo rag paper, 97 x 67.8 cm, edition of 3 + 1 AP
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Untitled, 2018, inkjet print on photo rag paper, 97 x 67.8 cm, edition of 3 + 1 AP
Naama Tsabar, Melody of Certain Damage #2, 2018, broken electric guitar, strings, microphone, screws and guitar amplifier, 99 x 335.3 x 7.6 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Transition, 2016, wood, canvas, electronics, cables, knobs, speakers, 223 x 152 x 16.5 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Untitled, 2018, inkjet print on photo rag paper, 97 x 67.8 cm, edition of 3 + 1 AP
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, Shifra Shalit, 2018, sheetrock, wood, graphite, hole, inkjet print diptych with frame: 57 x 91.6 cm and framed print: 57 x 91.6 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, Shifra Shalit, 2018, sheetrock, wood, graphite, hole, inkjet print diptych with frame: 57 x 91.6 cm and framed print: 57 x 91.6 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Work on Paper #6, 2018, ph-neutral cotton paper, cotton thread, ph-neutral glue, wood, 69.5 x 26.7 x 22 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Work on Paper #21, 2018, ph-neutral cotton paper, cotton thread, ph-neutral glue, wood, 69.5 x 56.2 x 20.6 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Work on Paper #22, 2018, ph-neutral cotton paper, cotton thread, ph-neutral glue, wood, 72.5 x 56.2 x 24.5 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Work on Paper #22, 2018, ph-neutral cotton paper, cotton thread, ph-neutral glue, wood, 72.5 x 56.2 x 24.5 cm, unique
Naama Tsabar, Dedicated, 2018, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels
Naama Tsabar, Untitled #7 (from the Double Face Museum Series), 2016, dye sublimation print, chrome frame and chrome guitar, 104 x 130 cm (frame), edition of 3 + 1 AP, 86.4 x 29.7 x 12.7 cm (guitar), unique with a print
