One of the problems that faces artists is the feeling their art should impress.When discussing this Richard Tuttle,the American post minimalist artist said that Art is not about the response it gets but a tool to get to what we know is the truth
Month: April 2011
Thinking about Orozco
I have been thinking about the Orozco show I saw at the Tate in London , about a month ago. At the time I am not sure I really enjoyed it – I didn’t know his work , so I found it difficult to understand what the work was doing .
I had seen a photo of a Citroen cut down in size (LaDS 1993) which intrigued me – it was in the show and was probably the strongest work displayed – along with a human skull covered in a pencil pattern called Black Kites (1997).Both were used to advertise the show.
The rest of the show comprised a mixture of work. From paintings of circles and folded paper to photographs and modified games. There was a room full of obituaries from the New York Times – and another room of blown out pieces of tyres taken from the roadside in Mexico.
A room of hanging dryer lint taken from laundrettes in New York shortly after 9/11 was for me perhaps the most engaging piece – referring the human traces left behind after a tragedy of this scale.
There was a playfulness and a seriousness to the show –referencing death and fun at the same time.
Photos of oranges on market stalls in an empty market , melons with cans of tuna arranged on them in a supermarket – signs of being alive , of fleeting moments and the enjoyment of witnessing life. This work operates in the realm of the social infrathin . They are like a record of what it is to be alive and are suggestive of small revolutions inside a bigger system.They are very human.
He mixes the systematic with the organic and looks at the orderly structures of game playing. His paintings are in fact diagrams of possibilities , decisions, responses and moves involved in playing any game. Reinventing chess using only Knights (Horses Running Endlessly 1995)and creating a billiard table with the ball attached to a string from above (Carambole with Pendulum 1996) – inviting the viewers to interact with the work and with each other.
Orozco’s empty shoe box represents a still life for today. Arguably the most significant object in the show – it plays with the public’s notion of what art is. Is the box an empty gesture- the emperor’s new clothes? Like Duchamp -it focuses on the idea and concept more than the execution of the work where the viewers are an adjunct to the work .For Orozco it is a personal attempt to see and understand the common stuff of life in a new way through endless experimentation. He finds new ways of looking at familiar things. He challenges our concept of utility – of what things are to us and asks us what is relevant and what is not.
Susan Keshet Art Blog 