Zarouhie Abdalian
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
Zarouhie Abdalian’s first solo museum exhibition, organized by Apsara DiQuinzio as part of the Matrix program at BAM/PFA, presented a triad of sculptures that treated sound as both medium and metaphor. Upon entering the gallery, one heard a metronomic tapping or clicking, though its sourcesix tiny mechanical hammersremained hidden inside an oblong black vitrine, which evoked the lacquered surface of a grand piano. Titled Each envelope as before (all works 2013), the piece literally reflected its architectural surroundings while expressing its own interior volume as something audible