Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco (born Jalapa, Mexico, 1962) captured the attention of the international art world in the early 1990s with sculptures that transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary, through an approach at once mysteriously poetic and bluntly material. A member of the final generation to make art in the twentieth century, Orozco explored the question What is sculpture? at a point when modernism as defined by a succession of avant-garde movements seemed to have expired yet was still full of lessons rich in potential.

In 1993 Orozco was invited to participate in The Museum of Modern Art’s Projects series, the first solo museum show for the relatively unknown thirty-one year old. Sixteen years later his work returns to the Museum in this overview of two decades of sculptures, drawings, photographs, and paintings. It reflects a career now based in Mexico, New York, and Paris but formed by many years of almost constant travel throughout the world, making and displaying artwork. Although Orozco created most of the objects in response to a specific site or occasion, the context of a survey exhibition provides them with a new resonance, as seemingly unrelated works speak to each other through shared motifs and methodologies.