The first mid-career retrospective of Analia Saban surveys the Argentinian artist’s ongoing engagement with fundamental artistic mediums, as well as more recent experiments in textile and computational thinking. 

Born in Buenos Aires and based in Los Angeles since the early 2000s, Analia Saban is known for her deft handling, dismantling, and exploration of the fundamental materials of art, be they paint, canvas, paper, ink, wood, or marble. Accompanying the artist’s first mid-career survey, the largest presentation of her work to date, this publication examines the breadth of her ingenious artistic output over the last two decades, from her ongoing investigations into the medium of painting to her more recent bodies of work that probe the intersections of environmental concerns, artificial intelligence, and human creativity. Both the exhibition and the catalog focus on three overlapping areas of inquiry—painting, weaving, and computing—showcasing Saban’s unique blend of highly skilled technical processes, poetic sensibility, conceptual depth, wry wit, and unfettered curiosity. 

In the opening essay, exhibition curator Meredith Malone examines Saban’s investigative approach to art-making, grounded equally in a fascination with the connections between artistic materials and the experience of being alive. Unpacking the logic of painting—approaching it as an ensemble of various technical rules, substances, supports, and human gestures—is for Saban both a means of critically reimagining the medium and exploring human, lived experience. Lynne Cooke considers the influence of weaving and textiles on Saban’s practice, while Gloria Sutton explores the artist’s engagement with digital tools and computational logics as a means of critically examining the production, circulation, and interpretation of images today. In a wide-ranging conversation with Michael Govan, Saban reflects on her practice and the possibilities of art more broadly—what it can do, what it can be, and how shifting material, technological, and social conditions continually reshape its boundaries. 

A fully illustrated plate section is enriched by nine focused entries on key works and themes, offering deeper insight into the complexity of Saban’s methods and the ways in which she creates intricate compositions that both draw upon and challenge conventional categories of art-making.