IN CONVERSATION: ANALIA SABAN AND SELENE PRECIADO

Analia Saban dissects and reconfigures traditional notions of painting, often using the medium of paint as the subject itself. Blurring the lines between painting and sculpture, imagery, and objecthood, her work frequently includes plays on art historical references and traditions. Paintings expand to sculptural forms and sculptures are presented in two dimensions, using the process of trial and error with new techniques and technology. Her unconventional methods such as unweaving paintings, laser-burning wood and canvas, and molding forms in acrylic paint remain central to her practice as she continues to explore art-making processes and materials in relation to her daily experience. Dealing with issues of fragility, balance, technique, and experimentation, Saban’s connection with everyday objects is at the forefront of her investigation of tangible materials and the metaphysical properties of artworks.

Born in 1980 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Saban currently works in Los Angeles and lives in New York City. She received a BFA in Visual Arts from Loyola University in New Orleans in 2001, followed by an MFA in New Genres at the University of California in Los Angeles in 2005. Saban’s works are represented in the collections of the Hammer Museum at UCLA, Museum of Contemporary Art, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles; Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in New York; Norton Museum of Art in Florida; Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires, among others.

Selene Preciado is a Los Angeles-based independent curator and works as a program assistant at the Getty Foundation since 2015. Previously, she was a curatorial research assistant at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), in 2013–2015. She worked at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) from 2009 to 2013, first as a curatorial assistant, then as an assistant curator. From 2005 to 2008, she interned and worked as exhibitions coordinator at various institutions in the San Diego/Tijuana area, including Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT), the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and inSite_05. Preciado obtained a BA in Visual arts from the University of California San Diego and holds an MA in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California. Her master’s thesis examined the first years of production of feminist Mexican artist Mónica Mayer. Preciado’s research interests include contemporary art and post-1960s conceptualist vanguards such as feminist art and performance art, with a special focus on Latin American art and its diaspora in the United States. She is currently working on an exhibition project for the Smithsonian Latino Center on the work of The de la Torre Brothers, to open in 2019. Past curatorial projects include Customizing Language, the inaugural exhibition of the Emerging Curators Program at LACE, co-curated with Idurre Alonso (2016); José Montoya’s Abundant Harvest: Works on Paper/Works on Life, Fowler Museum at UCLA, co-curated with Richard Montoya (2016); In Search of an Exit (or Eight Characters in a Parlor), Heritage Square Museum, co-curated with the USC MA Class of 2015; MIXTAPE (2013); Marco Maggi: No Idea (2012); and Anywhere Better than this Place (2012) at MOLAA.