Gabriel Orozco, Diagram 1 (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco unveils new series of works at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Soho, London. For the fourth exhibition housed in the freshly renovated Victorian warehouse, Orozco chose to present a majority of works realized in Tokyo, where he has been living since the beginning of the year.
The exhibition offers a multidimensional survey of the artist’s critical and aesthetical concerns. It features the brightly colored Roto Shaku, twenty eight Obi Scrolls and their custom wooden cases, as well as intricate variations of his fragmented geometrical paintings on canvas, and a witty series of photographs.
Gabriel Orozco, Roto Shaku (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The Roto Shaku consist in rounded poles and square posts casually leaning against the walls of the main gallery room. Placed at varied intervals they offer a vibrating 360° sequence of vertical signals. Each sculpture bears the standard ready-cut six shaku height (in the Japanese measuring system) and results of a unique overlapping of colored and textured tape wrapped around its full length. Circular, triangular, and rectangular shapes emerge both from the gaps between layers and from direct cuts into the material. While the regularity in pattern informs each piece’s structural logic, preliminary graphite drawings and painted surfaces in gouache remain visible and ‘unwrapped’, emphasizing the overall handcrafted feel.
Gabriel Orozco, Roto Shaku (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Roto Shaku (2015) detail, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The industrial tapes (in plastic, paper, imitation wood and metal) were chosen from the animated hardware and art supply store Tokyu Hands. Besides expanding the artist’s emblematic palette to bright yellows, oranges, coppers, and warm greens, they present different reflective qualities, which further suggests the experiment’s embedded playfulness. Within the confines of such humble means, Gabriel Orozco transposes his singular visual language into the third dimension, and generates a distinct system of production of objects, based on the process of adding and subtracting color.
Gabriel Orozco, Roto Shaku (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Roto Shaku (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Roto Shaku (2015), detail, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The installation as a whole composes a minimal landscape dominated by emptiness. The Roto Shaku can thus be understood as components of an open-ended organism, defined by transportability and impermanence. Their distribution in space holds the promise of future configurations, infinitely challenging our retinal and physical perception of negative space.
Gabriel Orozco, Unfinished 1, Fish Feathers 2, Fish Feathers 1 (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco and Briony Fer in front of Unfinished 1 and Fish Feathers 2 (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Strong conceptual relationships tie the wrapped sculptures to the other works on view, and more particularly to the paintings. Gabriel Orozco pursues here his pictorial research initiated in 2004 and which derives from the dynamics of circles rotating and intersecting on the surface of the canvas. Each work becomes the frame of an invisible grid, where circles are put in motion following the tridimensional jump of the Knight in a game of chess.
Gabriel Orozco, Fish Feathers 1 (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Unfinished 1 (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The blank monochrome background however mainly dominates Unfinished 1 and 2 and Fish Feather 1 and 2. The blue, red and gold curved segments, which twirl around the center of the canvas, seem suspended in an ephemeral state of balance. Orozco’s elaborate cerebral game has been pushed to the extent where the initial circles have almost entirely disappeared through their repeated overlapping. New negative circles emerge from the remaining outlines, creating a myriad of ‘confetti’, as the artist amusingly described them.
Gabriel Orozco, Diagram 2, Diagram 1 (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Diagram 2 (2015) detail, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The use of negative space as generator of form and composition is expressed differently in the paintings entitled Diagram 1 and 2. They indeed feature orthogonal pattern composed of squares and circles subdivided into halves and quarters. The iterative plan expands from the center to the very edge of the canvas. Invisible axes delineating a coordinate system emerge from the blank surface. Despite this Cartesian framework, this new typology of paintings embodies further concepts related to nature, time and growth.
Gabriel Orozco, Obi Scroll (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Obi Scroll (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The Obi Scrolls are collages made out of found fabric and mounted on traditional Japanese scrolls. An ‘Obi’ is the sash worn around the waste as part of a kimono. Gabriel Orozco worked with leftovers of these elegant silks, from which he cut out and flipped circles upside-down to reveal both sides of the weaving. The scrolls hang vertically, offering their muted tones to the wandering gaze. A subtle sense of intimacy radiates from them.
Gabriel Orozco, Obi Scroll (2015) detail, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Obi Scroll (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, wooden cases of the Obi Scrolls (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The scrolls are presented along their original wooden cases. These boxes hold both the idea of preservation and transportation, allowing us to recall how art was traditionally displayed in Eastern countries. Paintings were most of time rolled up in their protective cases and hardly ever exhibited per se. In the confidence of a quiet room, the work would only be unrolled for significant guests. This moment of shared hospitality would in turn reveal the contained mystery of the piece.
Gabriel Orozco, Obi Scroll (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, with Japanese master and Briony Fer in front of Obi Scrolls (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Finally, the photographs become the place which unites the works in terms of context, content and form. The straightforward Drain, Spit Plug, Wrapping, and Sunny Side Up stage ephemeral glimpses of beauty found in the everyday. From the artist’s perspective, circles are affiliated to physical objects and working instruments rather than a mere abstraction. Found Feather depicts a graceful accident of a given moment and place. This image is therefore emblematic of the way the artist perturbs our accustomed perception of reality. Building instinctively upon his immediate surroundings, Gabriel Orozco includes and utilizes forces that are both cultural and intellectual, natural and foreign.
Gabriel Orozco, Sunny Side Up (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Drain, Spit Plug (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Monkey Family (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
Gabriel Orozco, Found Feather (2015) via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
All Images Courtesy of Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
—S. Kitching
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Gabriel Orozco [Marian Goodman Gallery]
