Gabriel Baldessin – make_strip_composite.py

Gabriel Baldessin
make_strip_composite.py, 2026

Traditional intaglio etching (zinc plate), aquatint with stencils derived from a semi-generative process; printed in discrete grey tonal layers
Edition of 10 + A/P
Image Size 25×25cm / Paper Size 46×38cm

Artist Statement
This work takes George Baldessin’s historical print output as raw material and treats it like data: a career cut into narrow vertical strips, each sampled from a past print and reduced to four discrete grey values until the accumulation fills a square field. Those tonal values are translated into stencils and realised through traditional intaglio rather than digital output: the zinc plate is progressively blocked and worked with aquatint, repeating the cycle for each tone so the final image is built from layered decisions encoded in the archive. No expressive mark-making is added; instead, a semi-generative procedure lets the time lag between the original prints and my rediscovery of them recombine through constraint, method, and the physical logic of etching.

Gabriel Baldessin (b.1971) was born in Melbourne but grew up in France, before returning to the family property in 2017. Now connected to the Baldessin Studio, he is engaged in various projects across archival research and printmaking, both traditional and contemporary.