The Broken Vase series was spurred both by Saban’s time as an Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute as well as her captivation with the machinery used to make prints at Gemini G.E.L. For this project, each impression is made by filling one of five different stencils, made in the shape of Greek urns, with a clear acrylic medium applied directly onto paper. The medium is allowed to partially dry, and the entire sheet is then inserted into a hydraulic press originally designed for blind embossing. Inside the press, under the vertical pressure, the paper is crushed against the thick outline of the vase, producing varying forms of cracks, bubbles, and buckling. The resulting sculptural effect is entirely unpredictable and therefore vastly different from impression to impression.

The Broken Vase series was spurred both by Saban’s time as an Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute as well as her captivation with the machinery used to make prints at Gemini G.E.L. For this project, each impression is made by filling one of five different stencils, made in the shape of Greek urns, with a clear acrylic medium applied directly onto paper. The medium is allowed to partially dry, and the entire sheet is then inserted into a hydraulic press originally designed for blind embossing. Inside the press, under the vertical pressure, the paper is crushed against the thick outline of the vase, producing varying forms of cracks, bubbles, and buckling. The resulting sculptural effect is entirely unpredictable and therefore vastly different from impression to impression.

Great Speckled Bird is Allen Ruppersberg’s first collaboration with Gemini G.E.L. The piece captures an evocative vision of American cultural heritage: folk songs, transcribed anonymously, are combined by Ruppersberg with vintage hotel stationery and screenrprinted onto a player piano roll perforated with the eponymous Southern hymn. The combination and sequence of songs and letterheads, collected by Ruppersberg over period os several decades, is according to his aesthetic formal decisions, and the overall print spans over 20 feet but is divided by Ruppersberg into four panels for each of printing and presentation.

Ruppersberg has consistently pushed the expressionistic resonance of conceptual, narrative, and appropriated art. The use of collected hotel stationary recurs as a frequent component in Ruppersberg’s work and implicitly ties the narrative of his oeuvre to a peripatetic dissemination of Americana. Ruppersberg has been intrinsically tied to Los Angeles since the 1960’s, and his influential presence among LA’s community of conceptual artists continues to grow.

In This One, Saban presents three etchings that illustrate different sized stacks of paper. One pile presents a full edition of 25 prints, another shows an edition of 50, and another illustrates 100 sheets of an edition. At once witty and satirical, Saban uses a red arrow to indicate exactly which piece
of paper in the drawing corresponds to the signed-and-numbered impression of the print. By playing with formal traditions, these pieces are exponentially self-referential in a way that is most succinctly described as meta. The works comment not so much on the medium but instead encourage reflection about the nature of printmaking and the traditional of distribution the physical edition.