PÁRAMO | 127
NAAMA TSABAR
March 6–April 30, 2018
Páramo | 127 is presenting Naama Tsabar, an exhibition of works on felt, sculptures, performances and installations associated with music, freedom, body engagement and escape.
The exhibition focuses on the relationship between Tsabar’s artworks and Páramo’s Upper East Side townhouse, creating an immersive experience for the audience to engage with the works on display.
Two new monochromatic sculptures, Work on Felt (Variation 19) Midnight and Work on Felt (Variation 20) Cherry Red, hang in the gallery, laced with piano string and attached to amps. Created for the exhibition, these works confront the viewer with their minimal design. Viewers have the opportunity to interact with the works by tightening or loosening the strings, which changes the degree of the bowing of the sculptures and the sound that they make. The transformative nature of the sculptures is such that their appearance directly corresponds to the pitch that they produce.
In reference to the production of these sculptures, Tsabar presents Works on Felt Paper Studies, reflecting on the evolution and transformation of elements in her work.
The exhibition also includes Closer (2014), which highlights key musical concerns in relation to gender roles and coded behavior. The architectural sculpture, like most of the artist’s works, invites personal negotiation and physical engagement. Shown for the first time in 2014 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Closer will be activated at Páramo | 127.
Tsabar’s experiences as a bartender and as a musician in a punk band inform her visual language, evident in her newest body of work in which a series of sculptures of broken guitars focus on the moment following the climactic act of destruction. Taking a Dadaist approach, she maps the broken guitar pieces as they fall and reattaches their strings in an unconventional way, creating a site-specific floor instrument. This work is part of Tsabar’s guitar series, which explores the structure of music as well as the relationship between musician and object, in order to rethink the instrument’s gendered place in both art and music. The broken guitar serves as a prototype for Tsabar’s Melodies of Certain Damage, which premiere at SOLUNA International Music & Arts Festival on May 11, 2018, in Dallas, Texas.
Tsabar’s musical background is reflected in her Transition (2018) works, for which the artist has removed the internal components of amplifiers and speakers and mounted them on cotton and linen canvases. Connected to power, each canvas retains the equipment’s functional role with a set sound and volume level.
About Naama Tsabar
Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel) lives and works in New York City. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the Hamidrasha School of Art, Israel, in 2004 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2010.
Selected performances include Untitled (Double Face) at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Composition 21 at Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, New Orleans; and Propagation (Opus 2) at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel. Her work has been included in shows at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; High Line Art, New York; Frieze Projects, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; X Initiative, New York; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; Statements, Art Basel 38, Switzerland; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Belgium; Kunsthal Extra City, Belgium; MARTE, El Salvador; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Herzliya Museum for Contemporary Art, Israel; Casino Luxembourg; Zachęta Gallery, Poland; the Young Artists’ Biennial, Bucharest, Romania; Dvir Gallery, Israel; Spinello Projects, Miami; Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York; Pianissimo Gallery, Italy; and Ford Project, New York. Tsabar’s work has been featured and reviewed in publications including the New York Times, New York magazine, Artforum, Frieze, Cultured, ArtReview, ArtAsiaPacific and The Fader. Selected collections include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Haaretz Art Collection, Tel Aviv; and Coleccion Diéresis, Guadalajara, Mexico.
Upcoming Events and Exhibitions
Solo Exhibition
Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz, Switzerland
April 20–July 16, 2018
Opening: April 19
Naama Tsabar
Center for Contemporary Art, Israel
2018
Group Exhibition: The Skin of the Sound
CCS Bard Galleries and Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
April 8–May 27, 2018
Performance
Guggenheim Young Collectors Party
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
April 12, 2018
Guggenheim collection artist Naama Tsabar orchestrates an evening of musical performances by Buke and Gase, Fielded, and Prima, interwoven with a DJ set by BEARCAT.
Melodies of Certain Damage
Soluna International Music & Arts Festival
Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas, Texas
May 11, 2018
About Páramo
Páramo was founded in 2012 in Guadalajara, Mexico. The mission of the gallery is to provide a platform for artists to explore new artistic practices, as well as to function as a place where institutional projects can be realized within a commercial space. Páramo’s hybrid model has created a burgeoning market and thriving artistic community in Guadalajara. In 2017, under the new direction of Alexandra Garcia Waldman, Páramo expanded to New York City with a space on the Upper East Side. This decision has allowed Páramo to reveal the work of its artists to an international audience.
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