GABRIEL OROZCO'S MID CAREER RETROSPECTIVE AT TATE MODERN

'Mis Manos son Mi Corazon', 1991


exhibition view


'Yielding Stone', 1992



'Four Bicycles (There is Always one Direction)', 1994



'Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe', 1995



'La DS', 1993


'Elevator', 1994


'Empty Shoe Box', 1993



'Recaptured Nature', 1990


Jessica Morgan curator of the exhibition next to 'La DS'


'Ventilator and Toilet Paper', 1997


'Solar Graphite', 2006


'Horses Running Endlessly', 1995


'Samurai Tree Invariant' dot paintings, 2006-7


'Lemon Game', 2001


'Carambole with Pendulum', 1996, purchased by Tate for £152,000 from Marian Goodman Gallery, New York in 2006-7



'Dial Tone', 1992



'Chicotes', 2010, Orozco's newest work



'Black Kites', 1997


'Obituaries', 2008


'Lintels' (hanging), 2001, and clay body parts, 2007


List of Sponsors


Entrance to the exhibition


cocktail next to enlarged image of 'Turista Maluco', 1991


Raul Piña, a Mexican painter living in London and whose talent has yet to be recognized. He was part of the mythical exhibition 'A Proposito' curated by Guillermo Santamarina and Orozco in the convent of the Desierto de los Leones in Mexico City in 1989


Orozco souvenir's from Tate's shop


Orozco Chalk Chess Set, from Tate's Souvenir Shop

and views of Orozco's retrospective at Pompidou in Paris:







and Orozco's retrospective at MoMA in NY:






Press Release:
Gabriel Orozco
Tate Modern Level 4
Wednesday 19 January – Monday 11 April 2011
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gabrielorozco/default.shtm

Support for the exhibition is provided by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA), and Fundación Televisa, Mexico, supported by the Gabriel Orozco Exhibition Supporters Group.

This retrospective of the leading Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco (b 1962) will be the largest presentation of his most critically acclaimed works in the UK. A sculptor of global significance, Orozco draws on the histories of western and Latin American art practice with limitless innovation and experimentation. Featuring over 80 works, and a new installation never previously exhibited, the survey will highlight Orozco’s substantial production of sculpture, photography, drawing and painting.

Orozco has become renowned for his boundless experimentation with found objects, both natural and man made, which he subtly and playfully alters. The exhibition will feature major early examples of this practice, including La DS 1993, a classic Citroën DS car which the artist sliced into thirds, removing the central part to exaggerate its streamlined, aerodynamic design. Black Kites1997, a human skull upon which Orozco drew a dense geometric checkerboard pattern, will be another highlight of the show. Taking a structured flat grid and superimposing it over the contours of an irregular three-dimensional surface, this work shows Orozco’s fascination with combining the systematic and the organic. Other sculptures investigate the orderly structures of game playing, as in Horses Running Endlessly 1995, a chess set consisting entirely of knights.

Orozco’s work has been particularly informed by his extensive travels and his relationship to the various places he lives, including Mexico City, Costa Rica, Brazil, New York, and Paris. The exhibition will show how these diverse sources, resulting from an itinerant life, are reflected in the past 25 years of his work. In Yielding Stone 1992, Orozco created a plasticine ball, equal to his weight, and pushed it through the streets of New York. The sculpture became slowly imprinted by the journey and gathered detritus from the city, its surface containing the memory of its movements.

Using objects found in urban settings or capturing chance encounters, Orozco manages to simultaneously encapsulate the pleasure of witnessing life and its frail significance. A range of photography will be included which captures the poetry of fleeting moments, from ripples in a puddle to the condensation of breath on a piano.

Gabriel Orozco at Tate Modern is curated by Jessica Morgan, Curator, Tate Modern assisted by Iria Candela, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. It was organized by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, with Paulina Pobocha, Curatorial Assistant, Painting and Sculpture, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York where it was exhibited from December 13, 2009 – March 1, 2010. The exhibition travelled to the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Centre Pompidou, Paris from 15 September 2010 – 3 January 2011. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue as well as a new book as part of the Modern Artist series, by Jessica Morgan.

GABRIEL OROZCO 'THE SECRET OF HIS MIRACULOUS SUCCESS' A LETTER TO HIS GALLERIST IN DEFENSE OF SOME OF HIS CRITICS

In a letter to his gallerist Jose Kuri, the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco questions the texts of the critics Sergio R. Blanco and Estrella de Diego, published in Reforma’s cultural supplement El Angel on November 22, 2009 before his retrospective exhibition in 2009 at MoMA (December 13, 2009–March 1, 2010)
Published in Reforma newspaper, Mexico City, December 6, 2009

Dear Jose:

I write to you about the pair of recent articles in the supplement El Angel of the newspaper Reforma which talk about the success of my career related to my upcoming exhibition at MoMA, and that to summarize, we could title something like “The Miracle of the Success of the Mexican with the Secret Formula” or simply, “Orozco: The Secret of the Miraculous Success”. In these stories, with interviews (one to your brother Gabriel, or to yourself, or to the gallery owner named Gabriel, or Jose, now I don’t understand...) the two writers, to shorten them in one let’s call her Blanca Estrella (in journalism it is allowed to get the name wrong, isn’t it?) - describe the history of my “stratospheric ascent” repeating with uncensored style words like coincidence, circumstance and luck, and without mentioning even once the words talent, originality or even that I grabbed them by surprise! They also speak of me “hitting the nail” of international taste... As if that existed! Or as if there was a national taste as well... Or as if everything was a matter of taste! They also say that my success is because I became the favourite Latin American artist of the Anglo-Saxon critics, and this of course, in a contemptuous tone. Without realizing that because of my work I became the most visible Latin American artist and a critically acclaimed artist by the critics and contemporary artists of my continent.

The problem is that these two articles deform a little the history of my career until reaching alarming speculations that not only do not unveil what they call the “miracle” of my success or its true circumstances, but they tarnished it with the boiling steam of their bad blood. Because to say that the ‘Empty Shoe Box’ or the ‘Yielding Stone’ could have in their own words “excess of complacency with the more institutionalized discourses, those moving around colonial parameters and in a certain way paternalistic” is on purpose mistaking who the artist is. I do not know if they do it in order not to mention artists in Mexico that adopt works and strategies derived from mine, but which are definitely violent, tacky and melodramatic, that paternalise to the extent of tattooing symbolically and physically(1) its paid-colonized public disguised of “volunteered” sweepers(2). The emotional blackmail as strategy of exploitation of political correctness of the exotic foreign artist “exiled” in Mexico reached in reality tragicomic levels. Artists, that more than paternalistic, are pimps in their public and economic manipulation of the alien body and that transform art in the spectacle of the power of benefitting from cheap labour in the Third World. That is simply not me. I ask myself if young artists really believe that the stars, fate, coincidence, or the approval by power, gave me what I have. How have things changed since that miracle of mine that they talk about, haven’t they?

I wonder then if the recent international recognition of Mexican art, initiated through this miracle, is also pure luck and blessing of the colonial power. Yes, I’m sure it is!...

Does anyone remember how internationally insignificant Mexican art was before it changed? Miraculously? Do you remember Raquel Tibol(3) reading aloud a book about what installation art was? It was so that the public of the exhibition at the Desierto de los Leones(4) could understand what was happening there. An exhibition of site specific installations, relating to the architecture and the place in that way, had not been done in Mexico, and people (including Tibol) began studying it. There we began to change art in Mexico. In 1988, before I left to New York, the change began. That I did everything from New York is a lie. I did it in Mexico and then I stopped giving a damn about it, and from the outside this change consolidated... Seems so easy... With the scandal that broke with my first exhibition at MoMA and which spread images of my work everywhere. Remember the face of the local critics? It was as if the devil had appeared to them. From there they began to demonize me. By the way, do you know how much money did Conaculta(5) give to MoMA of the one thousand five hundred dollars they asked for the exhibition brochure? Zero! They said they preferred to support other projects, of other Mexicans in the immediate future, offering MoMA that if they wanted, Conaculta could suggest some names... ja ja ja...

Anyway, this kind of veiled subtexts with an apparent academic impartiality and a deficient documentation, derive from a cheap historicism, where the talent of the individual to understand his/her moment, and to do the things that he feels like it and with it finding new art for life and for the work, will never be the reason for his success. If anything, it can seem incredible to those Mexicans, that a co-national has innovated and influenced other artists in the world, which, although is not mentioned -in the breakdown of the ingredients for my success-, is a measure and perhaps the main reason for the success of my work in this years. Novelty, not exoticism, is what makes fortune. And the one that makes something before the others becomes an essential reference point. Success came after the creation of something new... which was successful.

I know you always tell me not waste time with this and you'll wonder why I write these things. I think it's time to tell the new local historians that are so morally demanding, that they learn to demand from themselves first. They should read carefully the best critics and historians of the world, in the same way that we learned from the best artists. The truth is that it is a pity that there is still not a “miracle” of Mexican contemporary art criticism. That there hasn’t appeared someone who is admired worldwide, and not only by those only interested in Mexican art, but by all those interested in contemporary art in general. There is no Mexican historian who has an original voice that is heard(6). What a pity. Is it bad luck? Or that the stars were not aligned...? I think they are just comfortable with what they think they know. We will have to give them as a gift a big round mirror.

Many greetings to Monica.

See you in New York very soon.

Gabriel

New York, December 1, 2009


Notes:
1. Here Orozco is referring to Santiago Sierra, and his tattooing of unemployed people in exchange for money. Sierra’s first tattoo was ‘Linea de 30 cms tatuada sobre una Persona Renumerada’, Calle Regina, 51. México D.F., May 1998. See http://www.santiago-sierra.com
2. Here Orozco is referring to Francis Alys’ work ‘Barrenderos’ Mexico City, 2004. See http://www.francisalys.com
3. Raquel Tibol, born in Argentina in 1923, was the great art critic and historian of Mexican Modern Art, she arrived to Mexico in 1953 to study the work of Diego Rivera.
4. Here Orozco refers to the exhibition ‘A propósito (14 obras en torno a Joseph Beuys)’ curated by Guillermo Santamarina and Gabriel Orozco and organized by Flavia González Rossetti, at the antiguo Convento del Desierto de los Leones in Mexico City on April 1989; the exhibition is considered by many as the first contemporary exhibition of conceptual and installation art in Mexico. The exhibition included site specific works inspired by Joseph Beuys by Ruben Bautista, Monica Castillo, Maria Causa, Roberto Escobar, Silvia Gruner, Gabriel Orozco, Melanie Smith, Raúl Pina, Mario Rangel Faz, Manuel Rocha, and Ulf Rollof.
5. Conaculta: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexican governmental institution in charge of the Arts and Culture.
6. Here Orozco is probably referring to well respected art critic, historian and curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, who also was Associate Curator for Latin American Art at Tate Modern from 2002 to 2008. It is well known that they belong to different camps, with Medina being a big supporter of Alys and Sierra. Their animosity has been made evident in the critical reviews Medina has written about Orozco’s work. See Cuauhtémoc Medina, ‘El caso Orozco’, Reforma, October 25, 2000 about Orozco’s retrospective at Museo Tamayo, México City, and Cuauhtémoc Medina ‘La retrospectiva como autoproducción’, Reforma, January 3, 2007 about Orozco’s retrospective at el Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, México City.

Translation to English and Notes by PLB

LACMA'S CONTEMPORARY LATINAMERICAN ART COLLECTION

an Helio Oiticica 1979 penetrable, of which I didn't know of its existence, edition of 3, with warning sign next to it in case you decide to go inside it.


Raul Lozza, Untitled, relief, 1953


Carlos Mérida, Geometric Forms, (Cubos), Painting, 1936


Jesús Rafael Soto, Almost Immaterial Vibration (Vibración casi inmaterial), 1963-1964


Mathias Goeritz, Message, 1967


Eugenio Dittborn, Airmail Painting No. 40, 1985


Cildo Meireles, Webs of Freedom, 1976-1998


Francis Alys, Man with Chair, 1993-1997


Gabriel Orozco, Lost Line, Sculpture, Plasticine and cotton string, 1993-96

I visited LACMA's small but interesting room dedicated to Latin American contemporary art, the expected artists were there (only one small work by a woman Valeska Soares). There was also no Chicano art. I would have expected a room in LACMA dedicated to Chicano-Latino art, but there was none, or I couldn't find it. With Latin American collections, there is always the problem of how to deal with the Chicano-Latino distant cousins, are they Latin American, or North American, or Southern California Artists? Anyway, it would have been interesting to see some work by art collective ASCO, or Daniel Martinez, or even the younger generation Mario Ybarra Jr, Los Super Elegantes, Juan Capistran...

One can only hope that in the near future Los Angeles museums become aware of the importance, because of their location, history and population, of including Latin American and Latino artists within their collection, and hopefully in dialogue with the collection and without segregation.

To view the list of contemporary Latin American artists in the LACMA collection click here.