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Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Esto es América, o qual é o limite?, an exhibition of new work by Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985; San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina). For his debut New York solo exhibition, Chaile activates a new suite of adobe sculptures with a profound sense of political purpose.
Working with symbolically charged, organic materials, Chaile creates large-scale sculptures that reinterpret the formal and material language of the indigenous communities in Northeast Argentina. Acting as both anthropologist and storyteller throughout his practice, Chaile investigates what he terms the “genealogy of form”—the notion that forms repeat throughout the history of visual culture, taking on a new significance in each recurring context. Incorporating these forms throughout his work—and alluding to their multitude of referents—Chaile at once memorializes and revitalizes the traditions and practices of his ancestors and his community.
For Esto es América, o qual é o limite? Chaile presents a group of large-scale adobe sculptures—produced on site in New York—accompanied by a series of charcoal drawings on canvas and photographs documenting recent No Kings Day protests the artist observed while attending a residency at Tinworks Art in Bozeman, MT. At the center of the gallery, a large-scale adobe sculpture—its form suggesting that of a giant lizard or bird, captured amidst some sort of transformation—marshals four, anthropomorphic adobe bread oven forms. Together, the five sculptures form an enigmatic procession, march, or perhaps, protest. The surfaces of the sculptures are finished with intricate constellations of black line drawings, all carrying layers of meaning so dense they become nearly impossible to decipher.
The No Kings Day protest Chaile witnessed in Montana quickly became a source of inspiration for his next exhibition. Building upon the artist's growing oeuvre of large-scale clay forms, the new sculptures in Esto es América, o qual é o limite evoke the Indigenous vessels found across the Americas—from Point Barrow in northernmost region of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost archipelago in South America— linked by their earthen materiality and sense of “primitivism.” Where Chaile’s previous sculptures have largely been static, upright—almost hieratic—forms, the new works in Esto es América, o qual é o limite embody a newfound sense of dynamism. In the context of the protest imagery, the sculptures take on an anthropomorphic quality, forming a march of their own—once-static forms now imbued with life.
On the walls of the gallery, Chaile includes an array of photographs and drawings that lend additional meaning and context to the sculptures. Made directly on canvas mounted to the walls while the adobe sculptures dried, the charcoal drawings echo the forms found on the surfaces of the surfaces—additional dense, tangled drawings that hold onto concealed histories and obscured memories. The photographs document a No Kings Day protest. “What struck me,” Chaile said, “was the manner of protest: people standing quietly on sidewalks with often ambiguous signs. I was also surprised by the diversity in age—elderly people, children, young adults—mostly white. Watching from the car, I felt a kind of alignment—not necessarily with the political opposition, but with the deeper message: a call for a more inclusive coexistence.”
The exhibition’s title—half in Spanish (Esto es América), and half in Portuguese (o qual é o limite?)—spans languages and geographies, and, like Chaile’s work itself, is layered with meaning. In Spanish, his native language, Chaile makes a statement: “This is America.” In Portuguese, a language Chaile is currently learning while living in Portugal, he asks a question—“What is the limit?”—immediately contradicting his previous statement. In this blend of colonial languages that reshaped the continents called “America,” Chaile wonders what limits would allow us to live together—what boundaries might support coexistence rather than sow division. The movement suggested by the sculptures, then, becomes a call to action as Chaile’s genealogy of form arises to resist its own erasure, to demand the change that will allow for its continued coexistence.
ABOUT GABRIEL CHAILE
Gabriel Chaile has exhibited extensively around the world. His work has been the subject of solo and two-artist presentations at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, Portugal; the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Fondo Nacional de las Artes; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Nuevo Museo Energía de Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina. His large-scale, public work The Wind Blows Where it Wishes was presented on the High Line in New York in 2023. Chaile’s work was included in the Venice Biennale and the Coimbra Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2022 and the New Museum Triennial in 2021. He has been featured in group exhibitions at the Fondation Thalie, Brussels, Belgium; Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Spain; Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo, Uruguay; Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo de Arte Moderno de Cuenca, Ecuador; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano, La Plata, Argentina; Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina. Chaile’s work is included in collections of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Spain; and Kadist Foundation, Paris, France. He studied Fine Art at the National University of Tucumán. The artist lives and works between Buenos Aires, Argentina and Lisbon, Portugal.
