RUBBER MAT WORKS

UNTITLED, 2009
Rubber anti fatigue floor mats and cable ties, Dimensions variable

The work is composed of hundreds of perforated black rubber mats that are connected with cable ties, creating an unexpected mass whose powerful smell pervades the exhibition space. The mass unfolds from wall to wall, circumscribed by the space's physical boundaries – yet threatens to continue spreading towards the viewer, perhaps even beyond him.

Like a wave that is about to break, the edges of this material mass are held together, rolled up and drawn back – embodying a liminal state characterized by the tension between the visible dimension of material excess and its powerfully ordered, condensed organization. The liminal state to which the work refers is at once emotional, political and material – simultaneously expressing the need for spatial expansion and for constituting borders. The environment it shapes is thus characterized by a clearcut, internal and cyclical logic; it combines potentially absorptive, softening and protective qualities and a crude, industrial sensation.

To a certain extent, the introduction of these rubber mats into Tsabar's arena of action is akin to using a ready-made, since these objects are familiar to the artist in an everyday context, where they are used individually to prevent slipping and the breaking of glasses or bottles behind bar counters. With the transformation of one context into another, this object of consumption becomes a kind of earth art. Threatening rather than protective, the installation invades the museum space while simultaneously producing a border from within.

- Text by Hadas Maor. From the exhibition History of Violence, curated by Hadas Maor at the Haifa Museum of Art.

Untitled (Jouissance), 2013
Rubber mats, 100 fluorescent light bulbs, 1.9' x 2.9' x 4.9'

One hundred fluorescent light bulbs were inserted into a stack of perforated bar mats, inserting each bulb into a row of holes. The stack takes on the height of the bulbs. Even though the bulbs could easily fill up a big room with light, instead their emitted light is mostly blocked by the heavy rubber material, contained, seeping out only at the points where the mats meet. The work examines the relationship between the solid form and the wave, that which has a weight and that which is weightless. A marriage between the office ceiling and the bar floor, overflowing and contained at the same time.