Gabriel Orozco: Inner Circles of the Wall

Gabriel Orozco: Inner Circles of the Wall is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. Exhibition support is provided by the Contemporary Art Fund through the gifts of an anonymous donor, Arlene and John Dayton, Laura and Walter Elcock, Amy and Vernon Faulconer, Kenny Goss and George Michael, Nancy and Tim Hanley, Marguerite Hoffman, Suzanne and Patrick McGee, Allen and Kelli Questrom, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Deedie and Rusty Rose, Gayle and Paul Stoffel, and Sharon and Michael Young, and by the Donor Circle membership program through a leadership gift of Fanchon and Howard Hallam. Air transportation provided by American Airlines.

Gabriel Orozco, Inner Circles of the Wall, 1999, plaster and pencil, exhibition view at the Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Š Gabriel Orozco, courtesy of the artist & Galerie Chantal Crousel. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn.

Gabriel Orozco Inner Circles of the Wall November 29, 2007–March 30, 2008

BIOGRAPHY

G

Gabriel Orozco was born in 1962 in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. He studied

thirds and reassembled without its center, creating a streamlined version

at both the Escuela Nacional de Arte Plasticas in Mexico City (1981–84)

of the original. In 1994, for his first commercial New York gallery show at

and the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain (1986–87). Invited by

the Marian Goodman Gallery, he created an exhibition consisting solely

the Artists-in-Berlin Residency Program of the German Academic Exchange

of four plastic yogurt lids hung at eye level on the four walls of the gallery.

Service (DAAD), Orozco also lived and worked in Berlin as a DAAD Artist-

Orozco has participated in the Venice Biennale (1993, 2003), Documenta

in-Residence (1994–95). With homes in New York, Paris, and Mexico City,

(1997, 2002), and the Whitney Biennial (1995,1997). As part of the 2003

Orozco does not maintain a studio. Interested in the accidental, he uses this

Venice Biennale, he curated the exhibition The Everyday Altered. In 2000 the

freedom and his constant mobility to create art on-site, responding directly to

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, organized the first major retro-

gallery spaces and outdoor environments.

spective of his work, which traveled to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo

An unpredictable artist, Orozco approaches his work in a seemingly casual

abriel Orozco’s Inner Circles of the Wall is a record of

Significant historically related works recently acquired by the Dallas

manner, and yet, his varied body of work—which includes sculpture, video,

intense physical action performed in the service of creat-

Museum of Art include Robert Smithson’s Mirrors and Shelly Sand,

installation, happenings, and photography—suggests that he is an artist who

ing a work of art, much like the Dallas Museum of Art’s

Lynda Benglis’s Odalisque (Hey, Hey Frankenthaler), and Barry

Jackson Pollock painting Cathedral, on view in the gallery across

Le Va’s Cut, Placed Parallel. More recent affinities to Orozco’s Inner

from the Orozco exhibition. In each case, the artist used nontra-

Circles of the Wall can be seen in Charles Ray’s One-Stop Gallery,

ditional materials to create what appears to be a traditional art

Iowa City, Iowa and Isa Genzken’s Door (Tür), in a perhaps more

as he discovers them or as ready-made assemblages he has created. A lover

object. For Pollock, it is the tradition of painting to which the artist

pedestal-based mode yet still summoning the precarious balance

of games, and a chess player since age eight, Orozco often invents his

contributed and from which he diverged. With Orozco, it is the

between order and anarchy that an artwork can possess.

own rules in his art and incorporates elements of play into his work, inviting

None of these works, however, addresses the very nature of and

geometry, his work is permeated with circles, appearing in both literal and

ideas behind the place in which they are exhibited (the museum,

compositional forms. An important figure in the international contemporary

idea of sculpture that he likewise seems to respectfully sustain as well as subversively revise.

In gestures alternately vigorous and sweeping, Pollock layered from

the place where they live) so imaginatively and forcefully as does

above numerous kinds of fine-art and non-fine-art paint onto his can-

Orozco’s. Coming upon this work in the Dallas Museum of Art’s

vas to create a pictorial field whose depth is both right up front and

Stoffel Gallery, one can be forgiven for thinking that this is a section

infinite. Orozco had masons cut a plaster wall in his Paris gallery

one should not be in, that something is being installed here or has

into numerous parts. He then drew precise graphite circles that just

just been dismantled, or that this is a construction site that has yet

touch the irregular edges of these pieces, and placed the pieces

to be roped off. One then notices the circles in pencil, and realizes

on the gallery floor and against the walls. Inner Circles of the Wall

that this assembly of plaster forms has in fact been placed here in a

suggests the here and the now of bare matter, as well as the beauty

supremely purposeful order.

of the infinite realms of a perfect and perfectly logical geometry.

And then, of course, comes the question, what might we really

While looking at Orozco’s roughly elegant assembly of chunks,

be looking at? Is the Museum decaying here (is this a ruin, albeit

slabs, and chips in a careful yet almost precarious composition, a

a beautiful one), or are these parts of a wall waiting to be built?

number of contrasting ideas arise: order versus chaos; the imposi-

Are the circles a guide to this reconstruction, or are they of a more

tion of the perfect form of a circle onto irregularly shaped, and, in

mysterious origin and function? The latter is certainly implied in

some cases, ragged, objects; the similarity between graphite (an

the work’s very title: the circles are inner circles—were they only

inherently unstable writing material) and plaster (a material that has

revealed after the wall was torn apart? One, of course, can’t know.

its own powder-based fragility); and the dissonance (or resolution,

Circles appear over and over in Gabriel Orozco’s art, in painting,

depending on one’s perspective) that can come about when contem-

sculpture, and photography, and are part of the artist’s ingenious

plating that this installation became a work of art only by an act of

use of geometry to provide structure for, but then to sensuously de-

deliberate yet careful destruction.

stabilize, visual experience.

Orozco’s action, like Pollock’s, challenges our ideas of how a work

By means of deceptively mundane objects and materials and

of art is made, yet it also follows a recent line of thought in the his-

through placement and composition, Gabriel Orozco creates situa-

tory of art, particularly in the area of sculpture. This is the notion

tions in which our eye seems to perceive an order before the mind

that the work of art, rather than being a solid, defined object, can

can discern it. And so, where have these circles been before now?

literally be dispersed throughout the spaces of the museum. No lon-

Are they just being revealed to us, or do they represent a system

ger pristinely placed on a pedestal or cast in the solid permanence

that has its own logic and structure that we can perhaps only sub-

of bronze, sculpture itself in the last forty years has taken on radi-

consciously apprehend? Could the circles represent, in the end, all

cally new forms that can suggest simultaneously the act of creation

those systems and structures and forms we will never see but have

as well as the dissolution of matter itself.

been told to trust are, in fact, really there?

Charles Wylie The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art

thoughtfully observes his surroundings to create conceptually based work that

Internacional Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. He has had solo exhibitions in Spain, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Japan, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, the United States, and Belgium.

teems with formal beauty. Like a 19th-century observer of urban life called

Caitlin Topham

a flaneur, Orozco strolls the streets of the cities he inhabits, photographing

McDermott Curatorial Intern, 2006–07

everyday, discarded objects from the urban and industrial landscape either

viewer participation with his sculptures and installations. Also influenced by

scene, and an evident influence on a younger generation of artists, most

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks go to Chantal Crousel; Cindy and Howard Rachofsky; Deedie and Rusty Rose; Allan Schwartzman; Jack Lane; Suzanne Weaver; Caitlin Topham; the exhibition, installation, design, registrar, and publications staffs of the Dallas Museum of Art; and, above all, to Gabriel Orozco for this supremely accomplished installation.

especially in Mexico City, Gabriel Orozco recontextualizes an everyday visual vocabulary through careful observation to engage viewers and change perceptions.

CHECKLIST Gabriel Orozco

With an exhibition history spanning more than two and a half decades,

Inner Circles of the Wall

Orozco has been included in many important international solo and group

1999

exhibitions. His first solo exhibition was in 1993 at the Galerie Crousel-

Plaster and pencil

Robelin, Paris, where he exhibited La DS (1993), a Citroën DS cut into

Approximately 4 ft. x 70 ft.

—C. W.

BIOGRAPHY

G

Gabriel Orozco was born in 1962 in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. He studied

thirds and reassembled without its center, creating a streamlined version

at both the Escuela Nacional de Arte Plasticas in Mexico City (1981–84)

of the original. In 1994, for his first commercial New York gallery show at

and the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain (1986–87). Invited by

the Marian Goodman Gallery, he created an exhibition consisting solely

the Artists-in-Berlin Residency Program of the German Academic Exchange

of four plastic yogurt lids hung at eye level on the four walls of the gallery.

Service (DAAD), Orozco also lived and worked in Berlin as a DAAD Artist-

Orozco has participated in the Venice Biennale (1993, 2003), Documenta

in-Residence (1994–95). With homes in New York, Paris, and Mexico City,

(1997, 2002), and the Whitney Biennial (1995,1997). As part of the 2003

Orozco does not maintain a studio. Interested in the accidental, he uses this

Venice Biennale, he curated the exhibition The Everyday Altered. In 2000 the

freedom and his constant mobility to create art on-site, responding directly to

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, organized the first major retro-

gallery spaces and outdoor environments.

spective of his work, which traveled to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo

An unpredictable artist, Orozco approaches his work in a seemingly casual

abriel Orozco’s Inner Circles of the Wall is a record of

Significant historically related works recently acquired by the Dallas

manner, and yet, his varied body of work—which includes sculpture, video,

intense physical action performed in the service of creat-

Museum of Art include Robert Smithson’s Mirrors and Shelly Sand,

installation, happenings, and photography—suggests that he is an artist who

ing a work of art, much like the Dallas Museum of Art’s

Lynda Benglis’s Odalisque (Hey, Hey Frankenthaler), and Barry

Jackson Pollock painting Cathedral, on view in the gallery across

Le Va’s Cut, Placed Parallel. More recent affinities to Orozco’s Inner

from the Orozco exhibition. In each case, the artist used nontra-

Circles of the Wall can be seen in Charles Ray’s One-Stop Gallery,

ditional materials to create what appears to be a traditional art

Iowa City, Iowa and Isa Genzken’s Door (Tür), in a perhaps more

as he discovers them or as ready-made assemblages he has created. A lover

object. For Pollock, it is the tradition of painting to which the artist

pedestal-based mode yet still summoning the precarious balance

of games, and a chess player since age eight, Orozco often invents his

contributed and from which he diverged. With Orozco, it is the

between order and anarchy that an artwork can possess.

own rules in his art and incorporates elements of play into his work, inviting

None of these works, however, addresses the very nature of and

geometry, his work is permeated with circles, appearing in both literal and

ideas behind the place in which they are exhibited (the museum,

compositional forms. An important figure in the international contemporary

idea of sculpture that he likewise seems to respectfully sustain as well as subversively revise.

In gestures alternately vigorous and sweeping, Pollock layered from

the place where they live) so imaginatively and forcefully as does

above numerous kinds of fine-art and non-fine-art paint onto his can-

Orozco’s. Coming upon this work in the Dallas Museum of Art’s

vas to create a pictorial field whose depth is both right up front and

Stoffel Gallery, one can be forgiven for thinking that this is a section

infinite. Orozco had masons cut a plaster wall in his Paris gallery

one should not be in, that something is being installed here or has

into numerous parts. He then drew precise graphite circles that just

just been dismantled, or that this is a construction site that has yet

touch the irregular edges of these pieces, and placed the pieces

to be roped off. One then notices the circles in pencil, and realizes

on the gallery floor and against the walls. Inner Circles of the Wall

that this assembly of plaster forms has in fact been placed here in a

suggests the here and the now of bare matter, as well as the beauty

supremely purposeful order.

of the infinite realms of a perfect and perfectly logical geometry.

And then, of course, comes the question, what might we really

While looking at Orozco’s roughly elegant assembly of chunks,

be looking at? Is the Museum decaying here (is this a ruin, albeit

slabs, and chips in a careful yet almost precarious composition, a

a beautiful one), or are these parts of a wall waiting to be built?

number of contrasting ideas arise: order versus chaos; the imposi-

Are the circles a guide to this reconstruction, or are they of a more

tion of the perfect form of a circle onto irregularly shaped, and, in

mysterious origin and function? The latter is certainly implied in

some cases, ragged, objects; the similarity between graphite (an

the work’s very title: the circles are inner circles—were they only

inherently unstable writing material) and plaster (a material that has

revealed after the wall was torn apart? One, of course, can’t know.

its own powder-based fragility); and the dissonance (or resolution,

Circles appear over and over in Gabriel Orozco’s art, in painting,

depending on one’s perspective) that can come about when contem-

sculpture, and photography, and are part of the artist’s ingenious

plating that this installation became a work of art only by an act of

use of geometry to provide structure for, but then to sensuously de-

deliberate yet careful destruction.

stabilize, visual experience.

Orozco’s action, like Pollock’s, challenges our ideas of how a work

By means of deceptively mundane objects and materials and

of art is made, yet it also follows a recent line of thought in the his-

through placement and composition, Gabriel Orozco creates situa-

tory of art, particularly in the area of sculpture. This is the notion

tions in which our eye seems to perceive an order before the mind

that the work of art, rather than being a solid, defined object, can

can discern it. And so, where have these circles been before now?

literally be dispersed throughout the spaces of the museum. No lon-

Are they just being revealed to us, or do they represent a system

ger pristinely placed on a pedestal or cast in the solid permanence

that has its own logic and structure that we can perhaps only sub-

of bronze, sculpture itself in the last forty years has taken on radi-

consciously apprehend? Could the circles represent, in the end, all

cally new forms that can suggest simultaneously the act of creation

those systems and structures and forms we will never see but have

as well as the dissolution of matter itself.

been told to trust are, in fact, really there?

Charles Wylie The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art

thoughtfully observes his surroundings to create conceptually based work that

Internacional Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. He has had solo exhibitions in Spain, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Japan, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, the United States, and Belgium.

teems with formal beauty. Like a 19th-century observer of urban life called

Caitlin Topham

a flaneur, Orozco strolls the streets of the cities he inhabits, photographing

McDermott Curatorial Intern, 2006–07

everyday, discarded objects from the urban and industrial landscape either

viewer participation with his sculptures and installations. Also influenced by

scene, and an evident influence on a younger generation of artists, most

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks go to Chantal Crousel; Cindy and Howard Rachofsky; Deedie and Rusty Rose; Allan Schwartzman; Jack Lane; Suzanne Weaver; Caitlin Topham; the exhibition, installation, design, registrar, and publications staffs of the Dallas Museum of Art; and, above all, to Gabriel Orozco for this supremely accomplished installation.

especially in Mexico City, Gabriel Orozco recontextualizes an everyday visual vocabulary through careful observation to engage viewers and change perceptions.

CHECKLIST Gabriel Orozco

With an exhibition history spanning more than two and a half decades,

Inner Circles of the Wall

Orozco has been included in many important international solo and group

1999

exhibitions. His first solo exhibition was in 1993 at the Galerie Crousel-

Plaster and pencil

Robelin, Paris, where he exhibited La DS (1993), a Citroën DS cut into

Approximately 4 ft. x 70 ft.

—C. W.

Gabriel Orozco: Inner Circles of the Wall is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. Exhibition support is provided by the Contemporary Art Fund through the gifts of an anonymous donor, Arlene and John Dayton, Laura and Walter Elcock, Amy and Vernon Faulconer, Kenny Goss and George Michael, Nancy and Tim Hanley, Marguerite Hoffman, Suzanne and Patrick McGee, Allen and Kelli Questrom, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Deedie and Rusty Rose, Gayle and Paul Stoffel, and Sharon and Michael Young, and by the Donor Circle membership program through a leadership gift of Fanchon and Howard Hallam. Air transportation provided by American Airlines.

Gabriel Orozco, Inner Circles of the Wall, 1999, plaster and pencil, exhibition view at the Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Š Gabriel Orozco, courtesy of the artist & Galerie Chantal Crousel. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn.

Gabriel Orozco Inner Circles of the Wall November 29, 2007–March 30, 2008