MATRIX 283 / Gabriel Chaile: No hay nada que destruya el corazón como la pobreza

December 13, 2023–April 14, 2024

Playfully intertwining Indigenous mythologies and contemporary social references, Gabriel Chaile creates soaring clay sculptures that expand on the forms, rituals, and traditions of precolonial cultures in northwestern Argentina. MATRIX 283 / Gabriel Chaile features all newly commissioned work, and is the artist’s first solo museum presentation in the United States.

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Gabriel Chaile, Rosario Liendro, 2022, The Milk of Dreams: installation view at the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2022. Courtesy the artist and BARRO Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, and ChertLüdde, Berlin. Photo: Andrea Rossetti.
Gabriel Chaile, Brenda, 2022; installation view of Piazza Sant'Antonio, Ortisei; commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina, 2022. Courtesy the artist and BARRO Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, and ChertLüdde, Berlin. Photo: Tiberio Sorvillo.

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MATRIX 283 / Gabriel Chaile: No hay nada que destruya el corazón como la pobreza

December 13, 2023–April 14, 2024

Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina) creates soaring clay sculptures that expand on the forms, rituals, and traditions of precolonial cultures in northwestern Argentina, where he is from. Raised in San Miguel de Tucumán, a city on the margins of what was once the Inca empire—known for its melding of Spanish, Afro-Arab, and Indigenous traditions—Chaile playfully intertwines Indigenous mythologies and contemporary social references with reverence and humor. His bulbous, anthropomorphic sculptures resemble the distinctive ceramics of the Condorhuasi-Alamito peoples (c. 400 BCE–CE 700, Catamarca, Argentina), which the artist has long admired and described as being “in between two states, as if they are about to become something else.” Rather than replicate their intimately scaled antecedents, Chaile’s larger-than-life sculptures evidence how the cultures and visual forms of his ancestors are unquestionably alive,...

MATRIX 283 / Gabriel Chaile: No hay nada que destruya el corazón como la pobreza (Nothing destroys the heart like poverty) is the artist’s first solo museum presentation in the United States. For this exhibition, Chaile presents newly commissioned work reflecting on the social concerns of his community. Often made in homage to particular individuals—ancestors, family, and friends—Chaile’s sculptures reflect how social issues of the present connect to long histories of anti-colonial resistance.

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MATRIX 283 / Gabriel Chaile: No hay nada que destruya el corazón como la pobreza is curated by Margot Norton, Chief Curator, with Matthew Villar Miranda, Curatorial Associate.

MATRIX 283 / Gabriel Chaile: No hay nada que destruya el corazón como la pobreza is part of BAMPFA’s ongoing MATRIX series of contemporary art exhibitions. Founded in 1978, MATRIX provides artists with an experimental platform to make and show new work.

The MATRIX program is made possible by a generous endowment gift from Phyllis C. Wattis.