Marianne Boesky Gallery presents Esto es América, o qual é o limite?, Gabriel Chaile’s debut New York solo exhibition, featuring new adobe sculptures, charcoal drawings, and photographs. Chaile, born in 1985 in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, explores the “genealogy of form,” reinterpreting indigenous Northeast Argentine visual culture. His large-scale adobe sculptures, created on-site, evoke transformation and protest, inspired by No Kings Day demonstrations observed during a residency in Bozeman, Montana. A central sculpture resembling a lizard or bird leads four anthropomorphic adobe oven forms, their surfaces adorned with intricate black line drawings rich in layered meaning. Accompanying drawings and protest photographs deepen the narrative, reflecting themes of coexistence and resistance. The bilingual title—Spanish for “This is America” and Portuguese for “What is the limit?”—questions boundaries and colonial legacies, urging inclusive coexistence. Chaile’s work, exhibited globally, is held in major collections. The exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery runs until October 18, 2025.
Gabriel Chaile: Esto es América, o qual é o limite? Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. September 4, 2025.
Press text (excerpt):
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.
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