Josh Lilley is delighted to announce the opening of Datum, Analia Saban's second solo exhibition at the gallery.

Upon considering its specific meaning, datum is effectively a piece of information — an individual segment of data. It is also taken to be a reference point - or a surface, against which position measurements are made, such as the lines of latitude and longitude that circle the Earth. Yet despite such readings, Analia Saban's work does not seem to elicit a particular need to define and map out the space around her. Nor does it restrict itself to focusing on a single episode, fact, or story. Rather, such a connotation provides the focus or a fulcrum for ideas — a pretext even, from which her attraction to surface materiality and her deconstruction of the object is allowed to flourish, take shape, and gain traction.

Datum concentrates on two bodies of work to be installed amongst each other in the upstairs and downstairs spaces of the gallery. Dismantling art historical conventions and continuously challenging certain ideas of display within the medium of painting remain principle motivations for Saban. Here she presents a series of circuit boards — carved acrylic on canvas paintings — together with slab foundations, canvases covered with a concrete layer and made by the same process of pouring concrete that is used when building the foundation for a house. Both cases result in an analysis of the painting surface - while commenting on the notion of painting as a sculptural object. The Circuit Boards express imaginary drawings of lines and geometrical shapes which intercept each other, creating structures. For Saban such patterning and delineation emphasize the complexities behind any painting, with its specific set of brushstrokes and pictorial elements. The Concrete Slabs, on the other hand, produce at first what looks like a plain and mundane surface. However, when looked at again, one sees the aggregate, the small particles of sand and stone that form a complex structure holding the work together.

Such building blocks are what define this exhibition: the concept of a datum being a prism for the factual truths within a work of art. Saban focuses on the ingredients that every painting contains, the adhesives that connect surface and decoration to organic matter, or the aesthetic decisions that take root in the possibilities of materiality. From the practical foundation of concrete to her conceptual ideas that take shape through the neural networks in her Circuit Boards, Saban continues this engagement with the legacy of surface in painting.

Analia Saban (b. 1980, Buenos Aires, Argentina) lives and works in Los Angeles. Saban Completed her MFA in New Genres at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2005. Previous solo exhibitions include Gag at Tanya Bonakdar, New York, USA, 2012; Dig, Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France, 2011; Grayscale, Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2011; and Information Leaks, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, UK, 2010. Selected group exhibitions include Lost Line: Selections from the Permanent Collection, LACMA Museum, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2012; Le Club des Sous lEau, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2012; Made in L.A. 2012, Los Angeles Biennial, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 2012; and American Exuberance, Rubell Family Collection / Contemporary Arts Foundation, Miami, 2011.