Rachel Tauber: Seam Line
The inspiration for Rachel Tauber's new sculpture series came from her mother-in-law's sewing box, which contained countless leftovers, parts of hem, lace, etc., associated with life and clothing sets that no longer exist. The exhibition is akin to an inner journey, linking the collection and preservation of her mother-in-law's belongings with Tauber's ongoing engagement with her identity as an artist, an identity reflected in her decision to perpetuate work tools in the sculptures.
The featured works combine stone with iron and steel fiber, with the addition of ropes, yarn or leather straps, to create a dialogue between different materials and diverse textures. These include lace, knits, and sewing, and are manifested by chiseling, drilling, or perforating the surface of the stone, and supplementing it with added elements. The resulting sculptures surrender multiple contradictions—space vs mass, weight vs airiness, light vs shadow, rhythm vs uniformity, texture vs flatness, black vs white.
Stone, in diverse variations, has fascinated Tauber for many years. Her work is underlain by expropriation of an object from its original-utilitarian purpose for another functional use, which expands its conceptual essence. By lending the sculpture a new identity, Tauber can unearth its vulnerability and softness hidden beneath the material hard substrate. She embroiders in the hard stone by piercing or drilling holes in it that simulate textiles and fine lace, raising questions pertaining to gender and society.
The sculptures in the exhibition may be divided into two groups: works that contain readymade metal components (nails, fretsaw blades, drills, various fasteners, and a bed spring), and others which feature handmade, manipulated metal elements. These traces represent the lifespan of objects in contemporary consumer culture. At the same time, preservation of the objects' memory in the stone alludes to the stone's eternal nature. Furthermore, Tauber also sustains a nostalgia for handicrafts and knotting skills that have almost become extinct in today's world.
Tauber works with Israelite Hebron marble stone. The stones used in her sculptures are from a local gravestone factory. They are sold in fixed sizes, and undergo formal and functional transformation in her hands. The massive work on each sculpture may take several months. The material changes and additions to each sculpture infuse it with vitality and transform the clean, cold and sterile tombstone into a warm mass with a new intention. The stiff, industrial stone becomes delicate, soft, and domestic. The hard stuff that symbolizes death is filled with life.
Tauber’s works exhibit a profound understanding of the material's qualities and the stone's texture. She challenges the boundaries of the material, pushing the ability to utilize the surface without crossing the limit and causing fractures or cracks in the stone. Stone chiseling is considered masculine labor, but Tauber appropriates it to describe a work that has always been considered feminine and delicate. Embroidery, knitting, and sewing are given an up-to-date visual interpretation via stone sculpture, based on visual deception as well as on the study of language and form. She uses an ancient craft technique to create a contemporary statement in another material. Such use of artisan techniques is not new. 1970s and 1980s feminist art drew its inspiration largely from so-called women's crafts. The objects used by Tauber to represent female crafts, however, typically represent the tough, masculine facet that uses massive drills for chiseling and construction. She constantly seeks contrasts, such as between masculinity and femininity and between the constructive and the decorative.
Lacework has always elicited questions regarding wealth and status obtained by exploiting disempowered and disadvantaged populations. The gaps between the long time and meticulous work required to prepare it, compared to earning abilities and the price at which it is sold, ever since it was invented in Venice during the Renaissance, raise fundamental moral social dilemmas.
A handicraft linked in human memory with the domestic sphere and especially with grandmother's house, lace is usually perceived as a feminine, homey, sensual decorative object. It is used to decorate clothes in general, and specifically female sleepwear, tablecloths, napkins, handkerchiefs, curtains, etc. At various times, wearing lace on collars and sleeves symbolized aristocratic status and was a sign of good taste. Wedding dresses are usually embellished with lace, or made entirely of lace fabric. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, closet shelves were also decorated with special lace strips.
The works in the exhibition allude to ancient traditions of stone lace, which may be found, for example, in the sculpture of Pope Urban VIII by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini1 dating to 1635–40. The works also allude to the glorious and lace-decorated burial culture of 16th-century Spanish kings and nobles, who were sculpted in fancy garments, as well as to the Mudéjar style2 —architectural lace-like decorations in stone that were mostly common in Spain.
In Lacemaker, Tauber uses a lace element extracted from a 17th-century painting of Queen Margarete of Austria by Spanish artist Bartolomé González,3 with iron drills, in the capacity of threads, embedded in the stone below. The sculpture takes its title from Vermeer's4 famous painting by that name from 1669–70, which portrays a domestic, feminine scene in the foreground: a woman engaged in the creative process itself. Tauber, too, discusses the creative-artistic pursuit, which has always been considered feminine. The incorporation of stonework and chiseling, however, raises contemporary gender issues about "feminine" and "masculine" crafts in the 21st century.
In Pillar of Ties Tauber incorporates steel rebar, iron wire, and a rope, which she ties together with macramé knots and blanket stitches. In First Embroidery, Tauber creates a jigsaw puzzle. The stone carvings were created via methods used by Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi.5 The sculpture was treated with "surgical cuts," as the artist defines them, much like jigsaw puzzle pieces that connect to each other with precision. On the two stone surfaces she laid iron mesh to create an airy contrast to the heavy, massive stone. Shades of light penetrate the mesh, creating an intriguing interplay of light and shadow, mass and transparency, open and closed, space and volume. The jigsaw puzzle motif recurs in Sewing Box, which combines the fretsaw blades used to cut the top part of the stone. Forming a fan of lines, the blades remain as evidence of the meticulous work that probes the boundaries of the material.
In Pincushion, Tauber used nails that simulate a cushion and straight sewing pins, combined with careful perforation that produces a delicate lace ribbon. Differences in the texture of the stone result in antithetical matte-glossy appearances.
In Lace with Bobbin, the small triangular stone addition resembles lace threads tied with weights, used in the past to facilitate weaving. Unfinished Work exemplifies an accurate drilling work that produces a variety of holes simulating fine embroidery. Like an unfinished embroidery project, the coiled thread is left as evidence of a work in progress.
Tauber's sculptures also surrender a humorous facet, as reflected in Variation on a Zipper, combining two visual languages. The connecting elements include metal parts, such as a door hinge, a tap-to-wall connector, a clasp, or a cabinet hinge—connectors not necessarily congruent with the zipper function. The drillings create a steady rhythm.
Experimental Desktop fuses a "reality" from her mother-in-law's sewing box—remnants of life, places and people, no longer in existence—combined with a sculpted, pleated hem, one piece of the many leftovers found in the box. In Stitch, a bed spring serves as a visual metaphor for the stitch, like a stitching thread that connects the three perpendiculars to the long, placed stone. The pattern added to the stone is taken from the à jour technique,6 used to create napkins and lace tablecloths. In Lace with Triangle-Shape Drillings, the stone is stretched to the limit of its ability to hold itself with holes that pass through it in great density, to create a lace pattern. Semi-circular in shape, the iron resembles half a hand-knit crochet. The sculpture's two elements, with their different hole patterns, correspond with one another.
Stone sculpture requires qualities, such as commitment, sincerity, seriousness, and professionalism. It demands patience and planning, and takes a long time to execute. Tauber likes the discoveries emerging during the work process, and the consequent new insights that lead to unexpected solutions. She seeks to push the boundaries of the material toward new realms that do not obey the traditional stonework. She decontextualizes the material, introducing it into a new, contradictory context, which raises questions and prompts the viewer to take a closer look.
The works' seam line lies between the accurate chiseling of the rigid stone and the delicate textures created by the drilled holes. The beauty conceals a perpetual interplay of covering and uncovering, absence and presence. Tauber's works reveal an aesthetic complexity. They surrender laboriousness, while conveying a sense of sterility and cleanliness.
Notes
1. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini was one of the most important sculptors of the Baroque period in Italy. The statue in question is decorated with special lace work on the sleeves and hem of the pope's dress.
2. Mudéjar art, manifested in Spanish architecture mainly between the 12th and 16th centuries, incorporated Christian, Jewish, and Muslim elements in various fields of art, but its main imprint was in the architecture of the Iberian Peninsula.
3. Bartolomé González y Serrano was a Spanish Baroque painter, specializing in portraiture.
4. Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class life.
5. Isamu Noguchi, a renowned Japanese-American artist, sculptor, designer, and landscape architect active between the 1920s and the 1980s, is famous for his sculptures and works in the public sphere.
6. À jour embroidery is a needlework technique in which portions of a textile, typically cotton or linen, are cut away, and the resulting "hole" is reinforced and filled with embroidery or needle lace.