sign in sign up
<<
Home , Abraham Cruzvillegas, Gabriel Orozco

98 19 le, ab d T on g-P Pin . 8 9 9 1

, e

Gabriel Orozco c n O

t a

s t c e

The Subtle Gestures s n I

l l A

e e S

d

Angélica Abelleyra* l u o C

I

h s i W

I

nverting the use of nicknames, Martínez is dents, irrelevance and meaningless acts —just a miniature greyhound, and “The Bird” is an to mention a few of the attributes ascribed by Iartist named . the critics and the general public to his instal - Martínez is Orozco’s grey pet whose tiny size lations, photographs, videos and . and playful spirit create a commotion on the Some pieces are priced at up to U.S.$200,000. streets of New York and City. Known in the galleries, museums and bienni - “The Bird” is a 38-year-old Mex ican artist, als of Europe, Asia and the United States, Oroz- born —to be more exact— in , Veracruz, co has now come to a contemporary venue in whose work breeds both “philes” and “phobes.” Mexico, his native country, where he has been It is full of subtleties, obviousness, surprises, acci - discussed less. The floor, roofs and walls of the Museum of International Con- temporary Art in Chapultepec Park are covered *Free-lance cultural journalist. with dozens of pieces offered up to viewers’ trep - All photos by Daniel Munguía. idation, complacency, indignation, enthusiasm Reproduced by permission of the Los Angeles Mu seum of Contemporary Art and the Rufino Tamayo Museum. and rejection. 1

41 Voices of Mexico • 54

Models , detail, no date. Four Bicycles-There Is Always One Direction , 1994.

Here, placed as if by mistake, lies an empty his own home with four other young people, all shoe box; there, a one-of-a-kind ping-pong table art students, musicians, sketch artists or tatoo with a basin in the middle stands near a chess artists: Gabriel Kuri, Damián Ortega, Abraham table with no pawns, bishops or castles, but only Cruz vi lle gas and Jerónimo López. knights; at the center are a compressed Citröen, According to Cruzvillegas, the workshop was a shortened elevator, fans with their blades fes - notably different from a formal space and was a tooned with toilet paper, a skull with quadran - far cry from aspiring to be an artist’s atelier. With gles drawn on it in graphite and billiard balls sessions every Friday, Orozco never gave instruc - hanging like Foucault’s pendulum. tions to work in any particular way or deal with These pieces were created from 1990 to 2000 particular topics. The collective effort consisted in Germany, Holland, South Korea, England, in criticizing others’ work and discussions about France, Mexico and the United States. They artistic questions of the moment, plus music, . e t are presented in the museum without regard to beer and fiestas. a d

o

n chronological order, inviting the viewer to wan - It was the beginning of the 1990s, and many

, l i a t der at will. alternative spaces were opening up in Mexico to e d

, s l present the public and the critics with ephemer - e d o

M al art, installations and object-art. Several for - TAKING OFF eign artists’ studios in Mexico’s historic down - town area were venues for exhibitions, as well Although Gabriel dislikes emphasizing his ori - as houses and vacant lots. gins and the mark that his father may have left Orozco, together with Mauricio Maillé and on him —his father was muralist Mario Orozco Mauricio Rocha, had already won the first prize Rivera, a man of the left with a weak body of for “Alternative Spaces” given by the 1987 work— we should say that he studied at the National Art Salon organized by the National UNAM National School of Visual (1981- Institute of Fine Arts for their wooden structure 1984) and the Fine Arts Circle of Madrid simulating a house on the point of collapse (1986-1987) and was artist in residence at the being shored up (a frequent sight in Mexico DAAD Gallerie, in Berlin. But what really had a City after the 1985 earthquakes). Later Gabriel profound effect on him was the workshop he participated in the collective piece “On Pur - directed for four years, from 1987 to 1991, in pose,” a kind of homage to Joseph Beuys made

42 Science, Art and Culture

The D. S. , 1993. Mixiote , 1999. up of installations in the museum situated in temporary Art and Kortrijk, Belgium’s Kanaal the former Desierto de los Leones Convent. Art Foundation; or international biennials in Ve n- In the early 1990s he would start to take off. ice, São Paulo and Kassel, Germany’s Do cu- “The Bird” began to travel. Once settled in men ta X; or private collections in Spain, Paris, Manhattan, he re ceived an invitation from New London, Florida, Gua da lajara, , Los York’s (MoMa) to pre - Angeles, Athens, and New York. sent a project. He occupied the garden, the escalator, a few columns and many of the muse - um’s exterior windows for his objects: hammocks, NON -R EVOLUTIONARY ART an interminable phone book and insecticide container tops. But the part that stirred the The cover of the Rufino Tamayo Museum ex - most enthusiasm was his involving the muse - hibit catalogue displays Gabriel as a child on um’s neighbors by asking them to put one or horseback, dressed in a traditional Mexican cha - more oranges in their home or office windows rro cowboy outfit, a typical Sunday-outing pho - every day. tograph, while inside, several art historians try This made Gabriel one of the three only Mex - to dilucidate his work and answer the questions icans who have had individual showings at the it engenders. MoMa: Diego Rivera was the first in the 1930s, Alma Ruiz, the curator of the Los Angeles followed by Manuel Alvarez Bravo six decades Museum of Contemporary Art and organizer of later. Orozco’s show was in 1993, when he was this exhibit, underlines his work’s most outstand - only 30, which prompted a series of both favor - ing characteristics: “his fondness for recording able and unfavorable comments, but above all, daily life, the relation of objects to his own body a variety of questions: What do people see in his and his ongoing interest in movement.” 2 Ruiz work? Is this art or just publicity? Why is there says that his work “does not attempt to be revo - an Orozco phenomenon? lutionary” nor does it introduce novel techniques And it is this phenomenon that has been or use innovative materials. What is interesting analyzed, praised and reviled at exhibitions as about it, she says, is the multiplicity of objects prestigious as those at Paris’ Modern Art Mu - used, thus favoring unexpected associations seum, Amster dam’s Stedelijk, London’s Institute and conceptual linkages that go beyond the for - of Contemporary Art, Chicago’s Mu seum of Con - mal ones in a “multifaceted” body of work and

43 Voices of Mexico • 54

Cats and Watermelons , 1992.

“an analytical mind, an intellectual curiosity that ality of their idea of unifying life and art; between relishes what is unassuming, novel and undis - Orozco and Borges, the idea that know ledge does covered.” 3 not necessarily make for progress. “The center Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, for his part, cen - everywhere, the circumference nowhere, the per- ters on the formal and conceptual changes in fect labyrinth is the desert.” 5 This is Orozco a faith - in the last 30 years, situating Orozco ful admirer of Borges, quoting him; Orozco, an in a hybrid trend and at an “aesthetic, geopolit - enthusiast of subtle gestures and the wake that ical and historical distance” 4 with regard to the people and things leave behind. experience of the object. Former Orozco workshop members Gabriel Art history professor looks at the Kuri and both wrote for links between Orozco and the work of composer the catalogue, along with colleague Damián Orte - John Cage and writer Jorge Luis Borges. Be - ga, who contributes a comic strip. tween Orozco and Cage, she sees the common -

VAGUENESS AND EVASION

A lot of ink has been used in newspapers and magazines to deal with the Tamayo exhibition. The critics have focused on the series of polem - ical objects and installations. 6 Analyst Cuauhtémoc Medina comments that Orozco’s work shows “an inclination to more or less circumspect good taste that suggests a state of melancholy grace that se duces the eye with fleeting moments of passiveness.” But he also chides the artist for “evading definitions” and for Black Kites , 1997. his “vagueness,” explaining that his success is

44 Science, Art and Culture

Toilet Fans , 1997. partially due to “the fetishization of the receiver” on few occasions he does have poetic qualities and the tendency to idolatrize the artist as “the (for example, the billiard table, the ping-pong Latin American whose proximity with Cage’s table and the fans), and on others he offers no methodology and Borges’ spirit may be able to proposal at all, but rather the “god-like” posturing dissipate the ‘baroque-izing,’ noisy ‘bad taste’ of of a “genius.” the American Latino in the 1990s.” Writer and critic Olivier Debroise parodies one of Orozco’s installations in Paris, “Clinton Is In - THE SILENCE IS ACTIVE nocent” (alluding to the U.S. president’s sex ual affair or his questionable job as world leader or From Costa Rica, Gabriel Orozco responded to the corruption of his administration —take your some of these observations. 7 Any polemical work , pick, just as the U.S. public has), entitling his cri - he said, “is neither passive nor circumspect nor tique “Orozco Is Innocent.” De broise reaffirms the institutional nor vague. People get upset; they artist’s strategy of “perturbing perceptions, giving talk about what they see; they laugh; they don’t objects not a significance, but an unforseen func - understand. If they were passive objects sunk in tion.” He also strenuously objects to the accolades vagueness, people wouldn’t talk about them. signed by Gabriel’s colleagues in the catalogue. Perhaps they could be des cribed as silent objects. Historian Teresa del Conde laments the cat - But the silence is active and can cause more alogue’s emphasizing Orozco’s life more than discomfort and mystery than noise.” He also his first years as a sculptor. She situates him as points out that the essays about his work are a “rag-picker” who deploys “a not-quite-so-free written by people qualified to talk about it. form of association with intelligent results. It They are “perfectly professional individuals who seems to me that he proceeds more by me tony - represent other voices that are telling the histo - my than by metaphor, thus indicating a special ry” of art. ability to give names to his own objects.” Overall, he says about the criti ques of his Another visual artist, Mónica Ma yer, deems work, “The interesting thing about the articles Orozco’s work “ingenious” and “cold,” saying that is that many analysts feel uncomfortable about

45 Voices of Mexico • 54

the work and me as a person. They try to tear it sculpture— tries to get close to what is real and down in the typical PRI fashion by disdaining to establish a different relationship with space and belittling the person more than the ideas. and with the body, just like what happens out The vagueness that they say my work suffers there every day on the sidewalk.” from is their own and their observations be - come personal, predictable and limited. None * * * of them manages to come up with a serious cri - tique. I feel sorry for them.” An eternal traveler, “The Bird” flew away again. He was in Costa Rica for a time. He went back to New York, and then he will go to Japan, where FAITH IN THE SMALL THINGS two museums have requested his work and his participation in the Yokohama Triennial of 2001. In different interviews, 8 Gabriel has talked about In addition, Manhattan awaits a public sculp - his work. “I still have faith in the small things. ture of his, and two other pieces will occupy Even when in sculptures you try to create a whole spaces in France and Germany. universe, I’m also interested in comets. I want Not only sculptures and cities await him. to show how a simple gesture can sometimes Martínez, his miniature greyhound does, too, so have more repercussions than a monu ment.... it can run through the streets and perhaps help My relationship with objects is first sensual, like him find objects that will become pieces for gal - with women or fruit, because of their color, their leries, a collector’s room, the wall of a museum flavor or smell. Then there is the approximation or just to lie next to the pillows where Martínez to each object, but generally I’m slow and I jumps and sleeps. never have an immediate solution. I can’t stand compulsive artists. I have everything in my head NOTES and then I retrieve it, or I replace it, or I redo it. I don’t care if they say I’m great with my hands 1 This exposition was put together by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, where it was shown from or a great technician. I prefer they say that I June to September of 2000. The showing in Mexico City picked what I do up off the sidewalk. I love that will last until February 4, 2001, after which it will be at because it’s a way for an object to become a real the Monterrey Contemporary Art Museum from February until May 2001. thing, more than a language. 2 Benjamin H.D. Buchloh et al., Gabriel Orozco , catalogue “I prefer small pieces that are integral, nec - of the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, essary parts of a large whole. And I like them Los Angeles (Mexico City: The Museum of Contem porary Art, Los Angeles/Conaculta/ INBA /Museo Rufino Tamayo, because I choose subtle gestures. I don’t like 2000), p. 25. grandiloquence and virtuosity. I’m looking for 3 Ibid., p. 29. the connection between the artificial and the 4 natural, the organic and the geometric, the new Ibid., p.30. and the old, dust and shine. I act based on col - 5 Ibid., p.156. lapses, contrasts. 6 The opinions of Medina and Debroise are from Reforma “What is the value in objects? It lies in the (Mexico City), 25 October 2000 and 2 October 2000, respectively. Teresa del Conde’s comments are from La condition that separates them from language Jornada (Mexico City), 24 October 2000 and 7 November and a play of signs. In the thing that turns them 2000; and Mónica Mayer’s from El Universal (Mexico City) 7 October 2000. into a stone on the street or into a puddle or 7 into a bad building. Into something that sepa - The author received these observations from Orozco by e- mail. rates them from art and brings them close to 8 Quotes are taken from the author’s interviews with Oroz- reality. What I do —which doesn’t even have a co in October 1993, August 1998 and August and No- name because I don’t know if it’s installation or vember 2000.

46