Thomas Solomon Gallery

LA-BASED ARTIST ANALIA SABAN DEBUTS AT JOSH LILLEY GALLERY IN LONDON

The young Argentinean painter Analia (say Anna-Lia) Saban has lived in Los Angeles for ten years, where she studied with John Baldessari at the University of California. She makes ingenious, metaphysical and yet humorous deconstructions of the elements of painting, adopting a different concept for each show. Previous works have included cutting out all the parallel lines from a Sol Lewitt and letting them fall as they would; sticking individual brushstrokes to the canvas with tape; and applying arrows to found paintings to show the direction of the brushstrokes - which then read wittily as wind directions on a marine or surgical plans on a portrait. She has also unpicked the threads from cheaply purchased figurative paintings and reknitted them into abstracts; and combined many unpicked paintings into a big group show of a 'Painting Ball'. The one thing she hasn't done - at least in public - is to apply paint directly with a brush onto the final canvas. That doesn't change in the subterranean and transcendental subversions of her new show, 'Information Leaks'.

Downstairs the paint is stored in bags of canvas: some of it bleeds through laser-cut holes in the canvas to form rudimentary images, while most of it dries into sculptural forms. Upstairs the paint is pressed between canvas and a Plexiglas template of an image, which it attempts - with just a hint of comical vanity - to move beyond.

PCK: You have concentrated on two types of work at Josh Lilley. What else could you have shown?

AS: I have three different current bodies of work I could have put forward for this space, but after looking at it I wanted to use the two levels actively. One other current body of work cuts out and sticks on marks: drawings using just one line over and over again on scotch tape, or paintings which reuse the brushstrokes from other artists' paintings - all labeled with the name of the original artist, but in different colours and reordered. The other body of work encloses paintings in plastic, vacuum-packed (in a process used for food) so they are sealed and remain quite wet underneath.

PCK: But you are showing one shrink-wrapped painting downstairs 'off stage'?

AS: Yes, there is one. It's funny how the viewer never normally gets to see the fresh paint, only the artist, who gets the fun of it flowing and changing and mixing things. So it's a fun way to show the pleasure of paint, alive. I like to play a little with clichés of painting in these. Here it's a suitably fresh bunch of flowers, though the painting is three years old. I also have some works in which I follow the same process but take the plastic off as a way of producing different effects.

PCK: Let's start downstairs. You could say, at the most basic possible level, that any painting is a canvas on which paint is stored. But you're taking that a little further, aren't you?

AS: Yes: there are eight bags of paint in the basement which I call 'Acrylic in Canvas with Ruptures' - instead of the usual 'acrylic on canvas'. That allows me to change the usual order, so that the paint is behind the canvas, and the canvas is active in making the image. That was fun, and is also a commentary on the idea that there may be too much paint out in the world, too many images.

PCK: How are they made?

AS: I set up canvas and support in the studio so they are held vertical, then fill the canvas with lots of paint, so it becomes a heavy object. It's expensive to buy so much paint, so it tends to be from left-over stock, or cans rejected because it was not mixed properly. I then use a laser machine which carves into the canvas, almost as if you cut your skin and a little bleeding goes on. In many cases the paintings in the show are still wet inside. 

PCK: What is the basis for the images which seep through the laser pricking?

AS: 'Acrylic in Canvas with Ruptures: Pipes (in Perspective)' plays with art conventions by reproducing an illustration from a book of how to draw in perspective; and I chose pipes to illustrate that, as they could also flow with paint. Then there is a still life. Others are geometric: 'Acrylic in Canvas with Ruptures: Grid' looks at what happens when the modernist grid is made to burst and suffer accidents. Paint does whatever it wants and I have to embrace it. There are also pictures of brushstrokes. Those Lichtenstein sculptures of brush strokes were an influence on them.

PCK: There is humour in them, too. One is lying flat on the floor... 

AS: Yes, with one prick causing a tiny bleed from the chest and a little tail coming out, too! That was an accident. Its placement plays with the idea of vomit on the floor. And it emphasizes the painting as object in a different way.

PCK: Are they paintings or a sculptures, given that they are bulky and not hung on the walls?

AS: To me paintings are sculptural objects even if they are hung as usual on the wall. Acrylic becomes a plastic thing. I like to let the work do whatever it needs to do, and being heavy these paintings needed support, and nothing falls from the floor! I was concerned, though, that they might not have sufficient presence, being low down, so I included some taller, more assertive pieces.

PCK: What is the process upstairs, in the 'Acrylic on Canvas Offset' paintings?

AS: Here the paint transcends the form. The technique is related, in that I cut a layer of Plexiglas with a laser machine, which presses over the paint to form a very basic form. The clear Plexiglas is my way of representing a very basic form: no other contents, no volume, no colour. That form is then subverted by the paint, which at the same time acts as a glue to hold the Plexiglas in place. Some bits of paint escape at the edges - maybe they will transcend it and go into another painting somehow. There is always something existential going on with the paint drying, aging, changing - paintings do have a lifetime. They age, travel and change over time. I embrace the change as a tool, though controlling it to some extent.

PCK: What are the images upstairs?

AS: The vase is the same image as I use downstairs. The pipes are similar. And there is a tree, which also reads as a map, and looks out of focus in some areas, which I find interesting. As downstairs, they play with the conventional subjects of paintings and also through the raised elements go back and forward between sculpture and painting.

PCK: Do you like setting yourself rules?

AS: I guess so. Sol LeWitt is a big influence, and I was good at maths as a child. Once you have a rule you want to see how far you can go. As a teacher, Baldessari was an influence too, of course, but there were no rules there - he is not at all dogmatic, and was always pushing me to do whatever I wanted.

PCK: Are you deconstructing painting in a critical way?

AS: Some people think that, and I can see why, especially when I unpick them. But I think of myself as looking at painting in a different way, not in opposition to it but so you can appreciate the elements in a different way. I demonstrate how much information and structure goes into a painting. It's a dialogue, not a fight.


Analia Saban: Information Leaks
11 June - 17 July 2010
Josh Lilley Gallery
London


Paul Carey-Kent is the former Editor at Large of Art World magazine.


Published on 12-07-2010

The illustrated interview can be viewed online at 
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/art_news/analia_saban_in_conversation_with_paul_carey-kent/6472