JENNY SAVILLE

In her new work, Saville fully articulates a process she has developed over recent years in which she allows an image to reveal itself by knitting together stenciled layers of paint, placing specific importance on the space between them. In this way, she focuses on the creative function of instinct and possibility rather than the realization of predetermined outcome.

‘Latent space’ is a concept in artificial intelligence that refers to the analysis of hidden structural similarities between visual data. Saville refers to this idea as she builds form out of abstract passages, making visible a transition from nature to culture. Known for monumental portraits and figures that explore the aesthetic potential of the human form in energetic and sensuous impressions of surface, line, and mass, she paints from photographs of models, often singling out individual body parts. Saville also alludes to a range of art historical moments, reinterpreting Renaissance drawing and painting, antique sculpture, the colors in Japanese shunga erotic prints and painted scrolls, and the work of modern masters such as Henri Matisse and Willem de Kooning.

“Against Willem de Kooning’s famous adage ‘Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented,’” observes philosopher Emanuele Coccia of Saville’s earlier Sirens portraits, “Saville seems to suggest that painting is the sole reason why flesh was created.” Coccia also discusses the central role played by the notion of maternity—through which a female body “transmits” physical flesh to others—in Saville’s work. In Latent, Saville further extends this idea by representing her subjects as allegories of promised new life. There is an echo in Latent, too, of Michelangelo’s storied ability to perceive the finished form of an as-yet-“unextracted” sculpture in an uncarved block of marble. As in Saville’s practice in general, these images reflect, in their seemingly fluctuating status, the mutability and interconnectedness of human nature itself.