Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist. He gained his reputation in the early 1990s for his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. In 1998, Francesco Bonami called Orozco "one of the most influential artists of this decade, and probably the next one too."

Biography

Early life and education

Orozco was born in 1962 in Veracruz, Mexico to Cristina Félix Romandía and Mario Orozco Rivera, a mural painter and art professor at the University of Veracruz. When Orozco was six, the family relocated to the San Ángel neighborhood of Mexico City so that his father could work with artist David Alfaro Siquieros on various mural commissions. His father took him along to museum exhibitions and to work with him, during which time Orozco overheard many conversations about art and politics. Orozco attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984 but found the program too conservative. In 1986, he moved to Madrid and enrolled at the Circulo de Bellas Artes. There his instructors introduced him to a broad range of post-war artists who were working in non-traditional formats. He said of his time in Spain, "'What's important is to be confronted deeply with another culture. And also to feel that I am the Other, not the resident. That I am the immigrant. I was displaced and in a country where the relationship with Latin America is conflicted. I came from a background that was very progressive. And then to travel to Spain and confront a very conservative society that also wanted to be very avant-garde in the 1980s, but treated me as an immigrant, was shocking. That feeling of vulnerability was really important for developing my work. I think a lot of my work has to do with that kind of exposure, to expose vulnerability and make that your strength.'"

Career

In 1987, Orozco returned from his studies in Madrid to Mexico City, where he hosted weekly meetings with a group of other artists including Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri, Abraham Cruzvillegas and Dr. Lakra. This group met once a week for five years and over time the artist's home became a place where many artistic and cultural projects took shape. Orozco's nomadic way of life began to inform his work strongly around this time, and he took considerable inspiration from exploring the streets. His early practice was intended to break away from the mainstream work of the 1980s, which was often created in huge studios with many assistants and elaborate techniques of production and distribution. In contrast, Orozco typically worked alone or with one or two other assistants. His work revolves around many repeated themes and techniques that incorporate real life and common objects. The exploration of his chosen materials allows the audience's imagination to explore the creative associations between oft-ignored objects in today's world. In 1995 he worked in Berlin on a Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst grant. "For him [Orozco], the decentralization of the manufacturing practice mirrors a rich heterogeneity of object and material. There is no way to identify a work by Orozco in terms of physical product. Instead it must be discerned through leitmotifs and strategies that constantly recur, but in always mutating forms and configurations." – Ann Temkin "What is most important is not so much what people see in the gallery or the museum, but what people see after looking at these things, how they confront reality again."- Gabriel Orozco from an interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh He is represented in New York by Marian Goodman.

Personal life

Gabriel Orozco married Maria Gutierrez on August 2, 1994, at City Hall in New York. They have one son, Simόn, born in November 2004. Orozco lives and works in New York, Mexico City, Tokyo, and France.

Selection of works

1981–91

1992–99

2000–current

Exhibitions (selection)

The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented a solo show of the artist in 1993 and a mid-career retrospective exhibition in December 2009. The exhibition traveled to the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and ended at the Tate Modern, London, in May 2011.

Public collections (selection)

His work has been included in the permanent collection of several museum institutions such as the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida with the work Samurai Tree (Invariant 260) from 2020–21; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Jose Museum of Art, California; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA); Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Pennsylvania; Whitney Museum of American Art; New York; Noguchi Museum, Queens; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Illinois; Tate, London; Museo Reina Sofia, Spain.

Art books

Art catalogs

Filmography