Gabriel Orozco
The Museum Of Contemporary Art
Los Angeles ARTnews, September 2000
Warning: This exhibition is fun. The pompous should approach with caution. Those already convinced that all art since Duchamp is "the emperor's new clothes" will find the emperor stark naked, having a ball: the only wall-hung objects in MoCA's vast main gallery are four transparent Yogurt Caps, rimmed with colored plastic, one placed dead center on each wall. Complete with their supermarket "sell by" date, these clearly non-biodegradable objects manage to be at once irreverent, oddly elegant-and even a little poignant in their reminder that they are likely to outlast all living things, especially ourselves.
Otherwise, be ready to explore the multi-media hodge-podge. Enjoy a game of billiards in Oval With Pendulum, 1996, with the red ball suspended at the center of the oval table. Strike it with one of the white cue balls, and its graceful arcs turn your game into a kinetic, three-dimensional-i.e. sculptural-exercise in spatial perception. Orozco takes on any and all media and material with equal zest. A multitude of rusty cans of all shapes and sizes, each decked out with a beer label, becomes a whimsical installation piece, Carta Blanca, 1999. Videos document the raw reality of the street, the camera meandering for up to an hour in casual, uninterrupted pursuit of everything From Container to Don't Walk, 1997-the titles mark the start and finish of each journey. A lot of Warhol here.
A lot of Duchamp everywhere-some a bit silly, like Four Bicycles, 1996, a construction of bicycle frames into a tangled pyramid. But there's much more here than intellect and wit: photographs that document surprising and funny juxtapositions or momentary perceptions (the circular, wet tracks of bicycle tires that conjoin two puddles in Puddle, 1996; a huddle of sheep in Common Dream, 1996); and tiny clay works, the simple embodiment of a squeeze of the hand, a gesture. In My Hands Are My Heart, a 1991 diptych photograph, a pair of hands is shown first folded into a heart shape against a naked torso, then blossoming out to reveal a previously hidden heart of soft, pink clay, almost quivering with vulnerability, and fully satisfying in its absolute simplicity and self-evidence. Orozco shows us that the intellectual play of a conceptual approach can equally embrace the human body, the human heart, and the human spirit.
