Where are They Now? Analia Saban's Fitted Bed Sheet

Los Angeles-based artist Analia Saban (b. 1980, Buenos Aires) explores the nature of artwork by deconstructing their making. Early in her career, she investigated painting through diagramming the direction and number of brushstrokes, laser-cutting strokes so that they fall into a loose pile within a frame, unraveling the canvas thread by thread to make a giant ball of painted string, and vacuum-sealing a painted canvas so that the viewer can witness the wet acrylic. 

Fitted Bed Sheet is a further exploration of the ways in which paint can interact with the canvas to create an image. To create this work, the artist made a silicone mold of a bed sheet, filled the mold with acrylic, and draped the dried acrylic over stretched canvas. Saban’s process subverts expectations of skill and emotion in painting as this work is a literal translation of object to image.

Fitted Bed Sheet was first shown in Made in L.A. 2012 and is currently on view at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston (through March 18) where viewers can see the evolution of Saban’s investigations in painting, printmaking, photography, and sculpture over the last decade.