The Lapis Press is pleased to announce its third collaboration with Analia Saban. Transcending Pigment from Paint to Canvas, from Canvas to Paint is an edition of 76 unique, mixed-media monoprints in which Saban continues to test the limits of printmaking. Each print is a work without paper. Similar to Saban’s previous collaboration with The Lapis Press, this new edition uses layered, acrylic paint as a substitute for paper, but takes the process one step further by printing on paint as well as Belgian linen.
Throughout history, pigment was added to a medium such as turpentine to create paint for its application on canvas. In this series, pigment is layered on top of a white layer of acrylic paint transforming what it means to add color to paint. Transcending Pigment includes four color compositions, each in two orientations. The color schemes are inspired by the printing process itself and refer to the ‘color targets’ that are used to test and calibrate ink and printer functionality. These targets were developed in the 1970’s as color printing became more accessible, and the process needed to be uniform. As printing evolved the color targets became more sophisticated and are now used to determine the accuracy and calibration of pigment and ink. In Transcending Pigment, Saban synthesizes the history of pigment and paint making with the technological advances printing.
While an Artist in Residence at The Getty Research Institute, Saban studied the history of paint production. Transcending Pigment taps that history in its examination of how the most celebrated artistic medium (paint) can be turned into a picture’s canvas itself. This series examines the aura of painting by recontextualizing it in the printing process. Each work is sewn to a board and allowed to hang freely at its bottom edge, like a tapestry. While the paint is torn, like paper, the linen that one normally expects to find pulled taut across canvas stretcher bars instead rests within the picture frame, like a painting. In these series, the compositions sit somewhere between painting, collage, and prints.
Born in 1980 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Saban currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She attended Loyola University in New Orleans for her BFA (2001), and University of California in Los Angeles for her MFA in New Genres (2005). From 2015 to 2016, Saban was at the Getty Research Institute for the Artist in Residence program. Works by Analia Saban can be found in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum at UCLA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, New York; Norton Museum of Art, Florida; and Centre Geroges Pompidou, Paris; among others.
Transcending Pigment is on view by appointment at The Lapis Press Studio. Each work in this edition is unique, for images of available compositions, please contact Camilla Johnston, Sales Director at the Lapis Press.
