The work of Analia Saban continually expands the possibilities of how paintings, sculptures and even everyday objects are made.
Through tactile manipulations of material and composition, Saban transforms straightforward things—copper, linen thread, acrylic paint, paper, printing ink—into complex layered networks of information that consider the entwined relationship between art, culture and daily experience. In her newest body of work, Saban delves into the increasingly porous line between our physical and virtual worlds—made ever more palpable by the further expansion of digital life in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“My way of coping with technology is to learn as much as I can about it.” Analia Saban
The exhibition’s title borrows from the basic computer function to “Save As,” which prompts users to save a file as a new format—a small, albeit fundamental, alteration. Throughout the exhibition, similar transformative processes take place that illustrate Saban's continued exploration of the analog-digital divide and emphasize the extent to which computerization shapes our lives.
The sculpture marble_calacatta_borghini1.TIFF (2020) presents what looks like a slab of marble leaning on an elegantly handcrafted walnut support. Stone from Italy’s Calacatta region is some of the most expensive on the market, prized for its pure-white background. Yet on closer inspection, the false nature of this work’s material reveals itself: It is in fact a digital image reproducing a veined marble surface, printed onto a sheet of porcelain.
The artist, who is accustomed to working with stone, was herself deceived by the marble recreation when she first encountered it at a slab yard in Los Angeles, making it clear just how far simulations have infiltrated our lives. Surreal and unnerving, marble_calacatta_borghini1.TIFF encapsulates the themes at work in Save As: Where does the physical, tactile world end, and the world of technology and machines begin?
The sculpture marble_calacatta_borghini1.TIFF (2020) presents what looks like a slab of marble leaning on an elegantly handcrafted walnut support. Stone from Italy’s Calacatta region is some of the most expensive on the market, prized for its pure-white background. Yet on closer inspection, the false nature of this work’s material reveals itself: It is in fact a digital image reproducing a veined marble surface, printed onto a sheet of porcelain.
The artist, who is accustomed to working with stone, was herself deceived by the marble recreation when she first encountered it at a slab yard in Los Angeles, making it clear just how far simulations have infiltrated our lives. Surreal and unnerving, marble_calacatta_borghini1.TIFF encapsulates the themes at work in Save As: Where does the physical, tactile world end, and the world of technology and machines begin?
In 2016, Saban acquired her first loom and set to work reinventing how paintings are made: Rather than applying paint on canvas, she began to weave dried, pliable "threads" of acrylic paint with linen threads, producing an object that hovers between painting and sculpture. She then added a Jacquard loom to her arsenal of studio tools, which combines traditional, hands-on weaving with computerized mechanisms that allow for more intricate and larger-scaled designs.
The compositions of these woven works, such as Woven Radial Gradient as Weft (Linen on White) (2020), are derived from Photoshop picture-editing functions. On the one hand purely abstract, they also suggest the inner workings of machines, like the ticking hands of a clock in Woven Angle Gradient as Weft, Black (Three O’Clock) (2020) and Woven Angle Gradient as Weft, Black (Six O’Clock) (2020). Here we see time stopped: An invitation to pause and reflect on our ubiquitous digital tools, as well as on our current global predicament.
The compositions of these woven works, such as Woven Radial Gradient as Weft (Linen on White) (2020), are derived from Photoshop picture-editing functions. On the one hand purely abstract, they also suggest the inner workings of machines, like the ticking hands of a clock in Woven Angle Gradient as Weft, Black (Three O’Clock) (2020) and Woven Angle Gradient as Weft, Black (Six O’Clock) (2020). Here we see time stopped: An invitation to pause and reflect on our ubiquitous digital tools, as well as on our current global predicament.
Computer circuitry is at the foundation of three further bodies of work included in the exhibition. Saban’s Copper Tapestries, also made with the Jacquard loom, interweave linen with metallic copper thread to create shimmering objects that hearken to the grandeur of centuries-old tapestries. Their compositions are modeled on the patterns of historical circuit boards that represent milestones in computer technology, which in turn have affected daily life.
“I wanted these tapestries to almost exist in the dialogue of traditional tapestries, but still be of something so mundane as a circuit board, which is everywhere.” Analia Saban
The circuit at the basis of Copper Tapestry (Optical Mouse, Computer Chip for Motion Detection, Xerox, 1980) (2020), for example, helped produce a mouse that no longer needed a rollerball control, paving the way for the modern devices we use today. The work’s surfaces gleam as light passes over them: Copper, here, represents not just an aesthetic medium, but an electrically conductive one that is often wound into circuit boards themselves.
The circuit at the basis of Copper Tapestry (Optical Mouse, Computer Chip for Motion Detection, Xerox, 1980) (2020), for example, helped produce a mouse that no longer needed a rollerball control, paving the way for the modern devices we use today. The work’s surfaces gleam as light passes over them: Copper, here, represents not just an aesthetic medium, but an electrically conductive one that is often wound into circuit boards themselves.
Saban’s Pleated Ink works likewise take circuit boards as the basis for their intricate, abstract-looking compositions, though to very different effect. To create these works, the artist developed a technique of applying thin, laser-cut patterns of paper over still-wet black printer's ink; as the ink dries, it assumes elaborate patterns in and around the paper outlines, taking on a life of its own. Rather than "ink on paper," these objects are literally "paper on ink" as they re-imagine drawing and printing techniques for the twenty-first century.
“The Pleated Ink works, which engage the eye like Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings, similarly reward the patient gaze with submerged formal narratives—a surprising display of lines, shapes, lights, and darks that optically emerge from seeming voids.” Joyce Beckenstein
Finally, Saban’s latest group of works comprise intimately scaled panels that incorporate actual computer motherboards that the artist salvaged from electronics yards. Saban overlays the same wet printer’s ink atop the circuitry, as in Motherboard #1 (2020), bringing its organic viscosity to bear upon the rigid, and now inert, computer components. These byproducts of mass digital culture usually go unseen, but now they appear as mysterious, portentous objects encased in the artist's pristine walnut frames, and gleaming in copper across the gallery walls.
Finally, Saban’s latest group of works comprise intimately scaled panels that incorporate actual computer motherboards that the artist salvaged from electronics yards. Saban overlays the same wet printer’s ink atop the circuitry, as in Motherboard #1 (2020), bringing its organic viscosity to bear upon the rigid, and now inert, computer components. These byproducts of mass digital culture usually go unseen, but now they appear as mysterious, portentous objects encased in the artist's pristine walnut frames, and gleaming in copper across the gallery walls.
Together, Saban’s recent series move between states of being, shifting in meaning as they bridge the zones of digital and analog, fact and fiction, human and machine. Impossible to pin down, much like the streams of digital information that we encounter each day, they carry with them a distinct sense of inquiry and wonderment, even as they tackle fundamental questions about art, technology and its meaning within contemporary culture.
This exhibition is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds as part of their NEUSTART KULTUR program
Analia Saban
Save As
February 25–April 10, 2021