GABRIEL

OROZCO
Jemini Patel
ORDINARY TO
EXTRAORDINARY
MY HANDS ARE MY HEART 1991
 “When I did ‘Black
Kites,’ I was interested
in how we perceive
volume, how we perceive
tri-dimensionality. I am
interested in the pattern
in the grid and how we
perceive truth, always
through filters of light,
darkness, or many other
things. It’s not a pure
vision; it’s always there
in layers—cultural and
physical layers. I was
just trying to impose a
homogeneous pattern on a
very complex tri-
dimensional object—a
human cranium.”
— Gabriel Orozco

BLACK KITES
1997
DOUBLE TAIL 2003
CATS AND WATERMELONS
1992
 “Beauty? I don’t
use the word beauty
anymore. Never.
It’s not that the
thing itself is
beautiful. It’s the
relationship that
you establish that
makes something
beautiful. And so
the word
‘beautiful’ is not
an absolute It’s a
moment, I would
say. It’s more like
a moment in which
you look at
something and you
feel alive, you
feel that you are
enjoying something.
And that is a
moment of poetry,
pleasure,
revelation,
thinking.”
BALL ON WATER 1994
STANDING
BICYCLE

2
002
“A photograph might or might not become a
work of art. In a way, it’s irrelevant
because I think photography is a necessity
for documentation…for memory. First it’s a
necessity. Then, some of these photographs
might generate enough thinking and
contemplation to be exposed for
consideration.” –Gabriel Orozco
PARACHUTE IN ICELAND 1996
 “I’m always
drawing for
projects, and
LIGHT THROUGH LEAVES 1996 writing. Making
diagrams and
measuring
things. But
also I like to
draw as another
way of
thinking. And
sometimes I
think my
drawings are
like puddles.
They’re like
water puddles.
You have all
this paper and
then you start
to drop things
in. And they
are like a
platform for
accidents to
happen.”
—Gabriel Orozco
 “I try always to be intimate with the
world…with everything I can, to feel
love for it, or interest in it.”
 "To be intimate you have to open
yourself, to be fearless, to trust what
is around you, animate and inanimate.
Then you start to change the scale of
things, of the public and private.”
 “I don’t think it has to do with the
size or the scale of the work. It has to
do with a deep reason why you are doing
that work. It can be a small piece or a
big piece and meaningless…just as empty
of real content as a huge public
sculpture or a small drawing can be
totally empty.”