GABRIEL OROZCO
Mundane and discarded objects are the stuff of Gabriel Orozco's work Rotting oranges, bicycles, tennis balls, elevators, toothpaste-thickened spit: these are the common things that are overlooked by others. But Orozco places them in new contexts, manipulating and sculpting them into new forms, sometimes photographing them. Through these processes, as if by alchemy, they are infused with fresh life, their subtle geometries becoming apparent for the first time. His alignments of objects (whether in photographs, interventions or installations) bring about connections that are like dialogues ricocheting in space. The spectator is integral to this process. As the artist says, "Art happens in that space between the spectator and the work. It's that space between that finalizes the work."
The Penske Work Project (1998) takes its name from the Penske truck that Orozco rented for his tour round New York's street dumpsters, collecting trash. He loaded pieces of cardboard, Styrofoam, metal, rubber door mats and detritus of all sorts taken from street corners and rubble piles into the truck and transported them to the gallery, where he assembled them into 20 sculptures for the exhibition "Free Market is Anti-Democratic". The quiet presence of these leftovers of industrial capitalism, like so much of Orozco's work, speak eloquently of the waste in contemporary society.
The sculptures bear similarities to another project, Lintels (2001), comprised of lines of fishing wire, draped with shredded pieces of lint recovered from industrial-size tumble dryers. Some hang in pristine, rectangular swathes, others contain clumps of hair, cloth fragments and dirt. All these shredded remains of daily life inhabit the space as if caught in a frozen choreography. As with his larger oeuvre, Orozco aims to comment upon and thus alter reality: "I concentrate on reality in terms of what is happening to me and I try to revolutionize that ...to rethink it and transform it. I try to transform reality with its own rules." -B.V./E.F.
Born 1962 in Jalapa, Mexico
Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico; New York, United States; and Paris, France
Penske work Project: Folded Thread, 1998
Metal, plaster, paint in 3 parts
144,8 x 241,3 x 96,5 cm
Dimitris Paleocrassas Collection, Greece
Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Metal, plaster, paint in 3 parts
144,8 x 241,3 x 96,5 cm
Dimitris Paleocrassas Collection, Greece
Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Mundane and discarded objects are the stuff of Gabriel Orozco's work Rotting oranges, bicycles, tennis balls, elevators, toothpaste-thickened spit: these are the common things that are overlooked by others. But Orozco places them in new contexts, manipulating and sculpting them into new forms, sometimes photographing them. Through these processes, as if by alchemy, they are infused with fresh life, their subtle geometries becoming apparent for the first time. His alignments of objects (whether in photographs, interventions or installations) bring about connections that are like dialogues ricocheting in space. The spectator is integral to this process. As the artist says, "Art happens in that space between the spectator and the work. It's that space between that finalizes the work."
The Penske Work Project (1998) takes its name from the Penske truck that Orozco rented for his tour round New York's street dumpsters, collecting trash. He loaded pieces of cardboard, Styrofoam, metal, rubber door mats and detritus of all sorts taken from street corners and rubble piles into the truck and transported them to the gallery, where he assembled them into 20 sculptures for the exhibition "Free Market is Anti-Democratic". The quiet presence of these leftovers of industrial capitalism, like so much of Orozco's work, speak eloquently of the waste in contemporary society.
The sculptures bear similarities to another project, Lintels (2001), comprised of lines of fishing wire, draped with shredded pieces of lint recovered from industrial-size tumble dryers. Some hang in pristine, rectangular swathes, others contain clumps of hair, cloth fragments and dirt. All these shredded remains of daily life inhabit the space as if caught in a frozen choreography. As with his larger oeuvre, Orozco aims to comment upon and thus alter reality: "I concentrate on reality in terms of what is happening to me and I try to revolutionize that ...to rethink it and transform it. I try to transform reality with its own rules." -B.V./E.F.