Work On Felt (Variation 7), Black

Naama Tsabar
Work On Felt (Variation 7), Black, 2015-2016
Carbon fiber, epoxy, wood, felt, microphone, guitar amplifier
Work: 190.5 x 166.4 x 90.2 cm

In this ongoing series of work, Naama Tsabar transforms raw industrial felt into modifiable stringed instruments. Through the addition of carbon fibre and guitar tuning pegs, the felt pieces take on new features that contradict their natural character. The work recalls the post-Minimalist art of the 1970s, extending its application by merging minimal aesthetics with performativity. Viewers are invited to directly engage with the works by plucking the strings and creating a new acoustic landscape. The works output sound through human encounter —tightening or loosening the strings changes the degree of the bowing of the sculptures as well as the sound they emit. The transformative nature of the work is such that the appearance of the sculptures, their erectness or flatness, directly corresponds to the pitch they produce. Reflecting on the use of felt as a material in her earlier works, Tsabar notes; “I was thinking about Robert Morris’s post-Minimalist gravity felt sculptures, and the deadening of sound in relation to Joseph Beuys’s felt suit for a piano. My first two pieces were on the floor, and in late 2015 I moved up to the wall.” [Bomb Magazine, Sculpture and Sound: Naama Tsabar Interviewed by Naomi Lev, 2018].