Pace Prints is pleased to announce Lo grabado de lo vivido (What is etched from what has been lived), an exhibition of new monoprints by Gamaliel Rodríguez. The exhibition will be on view from September 10–October 10, 2026, at 536 West 22nd Street, with an opening reception on Thursday, September 10, from 6–8 p.m. This presentation marks Rodríguez's first solo exhibition with Pace Prints.
Conjuring vibrant images of his native Puerto Rico and the wider Caribbean, Rodríguez's new monoprints revisit themes central to his practice while exploring the expansive possibilities of printmaking at a new scale. Rendered across sweeping surfaces exceeding four feet across, the works transform landscapes of the artist's homeland into meditations on the contested relationship between nature and the built environment. Layering lush vegetation, industrial infrastructure, and the remnants of colonial architecture, Rodríguez’s new body of work confronts the enduring tension between nature and industry across the postcolonial Caribbean and American landscapes.
Created in close collaboration with the master printmakers at Pace Prints, the works extend Rodríguez's drawing and painting practice into new territory. Drawing has long been the foundation of his work, including his signature use of ballpoint pen to emulate the fine lines of drypoint etching. These monoprints expand that visual language, allowing Rodríguez to translate his meticulous mark-making into works of greater scale while introducing the archival permanence of printmaking.The process begins with photographic source material, much of it captured by the artist himself while on runs through the landscapes he depicts. Using the photographs as a template, he then paints directly onto printing plates before selectively removing pigment, allowing the paper itself to emerge as passages of light within the image. This subtractive method creates a distinct, almost humid luminosity that heightens the atmospheric charge of each work, a hallmark of Rodríguez's visual language and a technique advanced through printmaking.
Rodríguez's electric chroma palette recalls the idyllic imagery of vintage travel postcards and tourist advertisements while subtly unsettling those familiar scenes. While appearing to be tropical scenes, the works on view are actually rooted in specific sites that register the climate implications of commercialized industrialization, including the Milwaukee War Museum, the ethanol power plant in Medina, New York, and the Cataño distillery in Puerto Rico. By anchoring the works in real destinations of commerce, production, and power, the artist renders the traceable weight of colonial history embedded in the landscape. Power appears both literally, through electrical infrastructure and industrial sites, and metaphorically through the systems that continue to shape land, labor, and identity across the Caribbean.
About Gamaliel Rodríguez
Known for his richly saturated color palette and haunting landscapes that blur the boundaries between memory and place, Rodríguez pushes the boundaries of drawing through works that examine the enduring legacies of colonialism. His practice explores the fragility of social and physical infrastructure, and the evolving relationship between humankind and nature. Drawing on the landscapes of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, Rodríguez places these forces in conversation with one another, using his distinctive visual language to reveal their shifting power dynamics. This exhibition builds on Rodríguez's growing relationship with Pace Prints, which began with The Town with Cloud Trees (2025), a lithograph, acrylic, gold leafing, and monoprint work that laid the groundwork for the expanded printmaking practice on view in this new body of work.