Knoxville, TN
5 April 2008 3:48 PM
Music today takes the digital seriously and thoroughly, a state of affairs left out of Sarah Shebaro’s decidedly analog exploration of the connections between music and visual art. Hers is a practice that trips back to the days of LPs and cassette tapes, but rather than present them for their sounds she mines them for their physical materiality, using empty cassette cases as frames, the graphic expansiveness of record sleeves as found background surfaces, the wood-paneled blackness of old speakers as sculptural monuments. It’s a practice that makes something special of the everyday and familiar, enshrining doodly "Daily Drawings" by framing them in the aforementioned plastic cases, finding inspiration in the tacky covers of albums no one listens to any longer. There’s a paradox to Shebaro’s presentation of musical remnants for their visual rather than aural qualities, but one far easier to grasp than that other paradox, the one where a dancer dances about architecture—and a writer writes about art.
—Lori Waxman