Gabriel Orozco currently has a retrospective on at MoMA that was recently
reviewed in the NY Times.
I was particularly taken with the description of one of the pieces in his first MoMA show in 1993, pictured above. Instead of using the sterile gallery space offered him by MoMA, he "chose instead the museum's nooks and crannies," creating this piece by placing bright pieces of fruit in the windows of the building across the street from MoMA. Holland Cotter writes in the Times, "You looked up and there they were: bright dots connecting art and life."
The main point of the article is a contrast between that show and the current one, which is bigger and more flamboyant. Cotter makes the point that the tones of these two shows point to a dichotomy in Orozco's artistic practice, concluding, "at some point he may decide which he really wants to be: the artist of poetic epiphanies or of institutional product. In this show he is both."
Yet he also says, "Mr. Orozco likes to disappoint; it is almost a credo of his. "I want to disappoint the expectations of the one who waits to be amazed," he has said." To me that quote would indicate that Orozco cultivates not just a dichotomy but a continuous change in his practice so as to confound expectations.
Either way, I cannot help being captivated by this description of "what Mr. Orozco has always done best: find the cosmic in the commonplace, sweeten abjection with wisdom and wit." Yet supposedly now, "At 47, Mr. Orozco is no longer the footloose wanderer, toothbrush, notebook and camera in hand, who found poetry in puddles and dignity in debris, dung and dryer lint."
Sounds like such an interesting show, not just for the art itself, but for what the chosen pieces and tone of the show overall say about a career and a man.
Wish I could see it!
