Continuing through April 23, 2011
For "Grayscale" Analia Saban has left bright color behind for a singular warm, bluish gray as she digs deeper into the foundations of paint and the painted object itself. "Paint Bag (Gray)," which sits on the floor and leads one to wonder whether you've walked in on an installation in progress, typifies the material exploration. The canvas is entombed in a plastic bag, and the gray acrylic paint, likely still wet, bulges in a clump where the plastic meets the floor. Other sagging paint pieces hang on the wall, their bulbous protrusions reminiscent of Byron Kim's more literal belly paintings. "Representation of a Chair" - at four-foot square the largest work in the show - is a painting in which the primary elements of a folding chair appear to have been cast, in sections, from acrylic that's been laid over them, and then laid in high relief onto a white canvas, the now 3-dimensional object providing the work's "painterliness." It resonates as a more tactile reconsideration of Joseph Kosuth's landmark conceptual work, "One and Three Chairs." Saban also utilizes laser-cutting technology in several works, executing various grids and lines through the process. The results, while groundbreaking in their way, come off as academic, missing much of the poetry of the more rotund, sculptural offerings. The strongest piece is arguably the most pure: "Cover," a smaller work in which one corner of a monochrome rectangle is pulled back, revealing the molded contours of the wrapped-around edge it once inhabited, and, along with gravity's pull, allowing a fraction of that same corner to fold drifting back towards where it came.
Thomas Solomon Gallery
