It’s easy to miss a tiny black and white photo of protestors in Bozeman, Montana at the entrance to Gabriel Chaile’s solo show at Marianne Boesky Gallery, but the marchers inspired the Argentinian artist to arrange his monumental adobe sculptures as if they’re conducting their own demonstration. Known for anthropomorphic sculptures inspired by indigenous art in the Americas, Chaile created five enormous figures with large, stylized eyes, mouths and arms drawn flush with the vessel surface. Here, a sculpture mimics the form of an oven, the open space inside the round mouth suggesting community production of sustaining bread. Placed in a circular arrangement in the gallery (where Chaile created them in-place this summer), their powerful size and charming, fantastical quality prompt appreciation and respect for the relevance and beauty of indigenous cultural tradition. (On view in Chelsea through Oct 18th).
