ART-O-RAMA, Marseilles
31st August – 2nd September 2018
On the occasion of Art-O-Rama 2018, ChertLüdde presented a project by Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile. Born in 1985 in Tucumán, Chaile has lived and worked in Buenos Aires since 2009.
Chaile’s work is very much connected with his own origins, the indigenous descendent of his family and the artistic traditions of his region. In his recent productions he focuses on the creation of big scale public oven sculptures, whose aesthetic recalls traditional stone and wooden Tucuman masks. Made with mud bricks, these sculptures are given familiar names in homage to Chaile’s relatives.
The artist is particularly attracted to the power of synthesis depicting anthropomorphic and zoomorphic features, and the use of the curved line in these traditional productions. Furthermore, the functionality of these objects relates to another point of interest in his research, the communal use of these sculptures.
For his presentation at Art-O-Rama, Chaile materialized a fictional film plot written by himself. In a post-apocalyptic environment, humanity has disappeared and only a few characters find themselves fighting for survival within absurd surroundings.
In this strange pink landscape, a vagabond mechanical quadruped walks across Earth to find the only remains there: an egg and a brick. The trio is united to form a being with a single objective: to fertilize and thus generate life. On their odyssey they meet the only other survivor on Earth, a mosquito.
The trio begins a series of adventures around the planet, until the day the mosquito chases the egg with so much effort that the triumvirate tries to flee, frightened, until contact occurs; then, in a short time a reddish belly grows on the egg and they believe they have reached their goal: pregnancy. Soon they realize it is just a mosquito bite. Undeterred, they continue their journey, even with hope, through the different landscapes but at a much slower pace.
Witnesses of all these scenes are the stars, who are now independent beings of familiar cycles and behaviors. Both the day and night illuminate with arms of light, one day deciding to join through the phases to find the right temperature and thus grant the trinity what they are looking for: the promise of a life.
The presentation consisted of 12 sculptures, as protagonists of the film who have come to life, and 9 paintings depicting scenes from the narrative. Each sculpture is hand-made by the artist using steel, brick, plaster and egg – elements which evoke ruin and rubble, while at the same time signifying vulnerability and life.
