Amshu Chukki’s series of video installations and viscosity etching prints attempts to retrace the various trails leading to the locations in and around St. Moritz where Albert Steiner made his photographs. He revisits these sites to restage certain landscapes from Steiner’s images in the present day, a gesture that aligns with Chukki’s longstanding preoccupation with exploring ideas of the landscape. In a suite of ten small video installations, tiny projections of landscapes are cast onto rocks he has collected from the very locations where he restaged Steiner’s photographs. These projected landscapes appear as small beams of light that illuminate the textures and surfaces of rocks that have weathered and witnessed time in the valley.
Each of the ten video installations is paired with a multicolor viscosity etching print and a corresponding engraved zinc plate. Chukki’s etching process on zinc echoes the photogravure techniques employed by Steiner, where the zinc plates function like negative blocks and the resulting prints become positive images through which the landscapes are unearthed in the act of printmaking. Together, these works reflect on the idea of landscape through staging, geological time, memory, surface textures, and the shifting colors of the Engadin valley across seasons.
