The work holds a subtlety that Michael Pepi will explore in his review of the show. Are these paintings, no, is painting itself, the act of encoding things onto a surface? The optical plain is questioned as a place that should have depth, and the materials of painting are questioned as just being a support for the act of paintings. This hybrid object/subject, the painting as support and support as painting, or the subjectile, is an old concept that gained considerable importance during the 1960's and hasn't really diminished since. Minimalism took the object to be something in contrast to the Abstract Expressionist's insistence that only a nonmaterial expression could express any realness. Arguments about what is real aside, Pepi explores Saban's work via the idea of subjectileness and Saban's additions to this theory.
So, don't miss the show and certainly don't miss the review!
All images are courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar.
