Though Gabriel Valansi is internationally known as a photographer, it’s hard to define him as such. The monumental scale of his work, its nontraditional approach to installation, and the interaction between different elements far exceed the limits of photography, generating an a priori spatial disposition more akin to sculpture. Spatiality, in fact, is a precondition for Valansi’s work. He creates in context, with the viewer’s physical and intellectual participation. But he clearly views the world through photography; and from behind the camera, he focuses on manifestations of cruelty, violence, and humanity’s self-destructive impulse. Valansi is particularly interested in how the digital era has normalized even the most reprehensible human tendencies, making them dangerously familiar. …see the entire article in the print version of March’s Sculpture magazine.
