Analia Saban: Grayscale

Thomas Solomon Gallery is pleased to present new works by Los Angeles artist Analia Saban in an exhibition titled GRAYSCALE. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The show will open at Thomas Solomon Gallery with a reception for the artist on Saturday March 12th, 6 – 8 PM at 427 Bernard Street, Chinatown, Los Angeles.

Analia Saban has been mining art history in her experiments in color, form, and materials. She works in flat and sculptural media to debunk the mysteries associated with fine art, to delightful, sometimes, poignant formal effect. The artist’s processes – across media, dimension, and scale – turn, in this exhibition, to an exploration of physicality and time. Working on an intimate scale (none of the works is taller than 40 inches) the artist has created, through experimentation and innovation, a collection of works that challenge the viewer’s notion of traditional artistic media from the annuls of art history. Paintings are expanded to sculptural forms; sculptures are presented in two-dimensional strategies; and the patina of age is reproduced through a deft use of computer-aided methodology.

Fundamentals of physics are upended in works using encaustic, a material more familiar to students and admirers of Johns, Rauschenberg and Rivera. The deceptively simple process produces works that hover in a sort of stasis: no longer liquid, but subtle evidence of the fluid state of the material remains on surfaces. In other small-scale works, the artist has “etched” the surface, creating delicate, lacey patterns that hover between object and simulacra, suggesting recent antiquity and the patina of time, echoing Daguerre and Talbot. Each work wears its process on its sleeve, neither denying nor erasing its creation, but rather revealing the processes through contemplation, coaxing the viewer into a complex cognition of time, material, and form.

Analia Saban was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was educated at Loyola University, New Orleans (BFA 2001) and University of California, Los Angeles (MFA 2005). Recent solo exhibitions include Kim Light Gallery/Lightbox (2005); Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France (2009, 2007); Galerie Sprüth Magers Projekte, Munich, Germany (2007); and Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2010). Her works were recently included in the group exhibition How Soon Now at the Rubell Family Collection Contemporary Art Foundation (Miami, 2010). A 2009 recipient of the Durfee Foundation ARC Grant and the 2011 City of Santa Monica Artist Fellowship, Saban lives and works in Santa Monica, California.