Gabriel Orozco facts for kids

Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a famous Mexican artist. He became well-known in the early 1990s. He explores art through drawing, photography, sculpture, and installations. An art critic once called him "one of the most influential artists" of his time.

About Gabriel Orozco

His Early Life and School

Gabriel Orozco was born in 1962 in Veracruz, Mexico. His father, Mario Orozco Rivera, was a mural painter and art teacher. When Gabriel was six, his family moved to Mexico City. His father worked with another artist, David Alfaro Siquieros, on big wall paintings.

Gabriel often went with his father to museums and watched him work. He heard many talks about art and politics. He went to the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas from 1981 to 1984. But he felt the art program was too old-fashioned.

In 1986, he moved to Madrid, Spain. He studied at the Circulo de Bellas Artes. His teachers there showed him many new artists. These artists used different and unusual ways to create art. Gabriel felt like an outsider in Spain, which helped him develop his unique art style. He learned to turn his feelings of being vulnerable into a strength.

How His Art Career Started

In 1987, Orozco came back to Mexico City. He started weekly meetings with other artists at his home. This group met for five years. His home became a place where many art projects began.

Orozco's art was inspired by his travels and exploring city streets. He wanted to create art differently from the popular styles of the 1980s. Back then, many artists used huge studios and lots of helpers. Orozco, however, often worked alone or with just one or two assistants.

His art often uses everyday objects and repeated ideas. He wants people to look at common things in new ways. He helps us imagine new connections between objects we usually ignore.

In 1995, he worked in Berlin on an art grant. An art expert, Ann Temkin, said that Orozco's art doesn't have one specific look. Instead, you can recognize it by his ideas and methods. These ideas show up in many different forms. Orozco himself said that what matters most is "what people see after looking at these things, how they confront reality again."

Gabriel Orozco's Personal Life

Gabriel Orozco married Maria Gutierrez in New York on August 2, 1994. They have a son named Simόn, who was born in November 2004. Gabriel Orozco lives and works in different cities. These include New York, Mexico City, Tokyo, and places in France.

A Look at Some of His Artworks

Early Works (1981–1991)

Recaptured Nature (1991)

This was one of Orozco's first sculptures. He made it from truck tire inner tubes. He cut the rubber and shaped it into an inflatable ball. Orozco said it was like a math exercise about how things connect. Recaptured Nature shows how anything can become something else.

Sleeping Dog (1990)

Orozco started using photography around 1989. In Sleeping Dog, he photographed a sleeping dog from above. The picture makes the dog look like both an image and a real object. This photo shows how Orozco uses photography to inspire his sculptures.

Crazy Tourist (1991)

Orozco took this photo in Brazil. He found an empty market with leftover rotting oranges. He placed one orange on each table. Locals watching him called him a "turista maluco" (crazy tourist). This artwork shows how Orozco uses photos to capture quick, special moments. He wants you to remember the event, not just the picture.

My Hands are my Heart (1991)

This is a small, heart-shaped sculpture. Orozco made it by pressing his fingers into a lump of clay. You can see his finger marks in the shape of a heart. The hard clay shows how strong art can be, while the heart shape reminds us of soft feelings. It also makes you think about the artist's touch. Orozco also took photos of himself holding this artwork near his actual heart.

Works from 1992–1999

Yielding Stone (1992)

For this artwork, Orozco rolled a solid ball of gray plasticine through the streets. It picked up dirt, pebbles, and debris. He then showed it in a gallery. The ball kept collecting dust, making it a changing artwork. It shows how art can interact with its surroundings.

Empty Shoe Box (1993)

At an art show in Venice, Orozco simply placed an empty shoebox on the floor. This might seem simple, but he wanted viewers to notice their surroundings. By putting a common object in an empty space, he made people more aware of what was there and what wasn't.

Home Run (1993)

For an exhibition at MoMA in New York, Orozco asked people in nearby buildings to place oranges in their windows. This meant that visitors could see the art even after leaving the museum. It was a playful way to show that art can be found anywhere, blurring the line between art and everyday life.

La DS (1993)

Orozco worked on this piece in Paris. He took a classic 1950s French car, a Citroen DS, and cut out a middle section. He then put the two remaining halves back together. The car still looked like a car, but it was much thinner. This artwork makes you think about how we see objects and how they should behave. It creates a mental image that feels like a photograph.

Yogurt Caps (1994)

For his first show with Marian Goodman in New York, Orozco placed four yogurt caps on opposite walls of an empty gallery room. He sometimes aims to "disappoint the viewer." This means his art might seem very simple at first. Yogurt Caps made people think about space, emptiness, and their own awareness. An art expert, Ann Temkin, called it "a poem about nothing, that beautifully, could thus be one about everything too."

Working Tables (1996)

Orozco's first Working Table was shown in 1996. These tables are collections of sketches, ideas, found objects, and unfinished artworks. They give a close look at how the artist thinks and creates. Seeing these small objects together helps viewers understand the repeating ideas in Orozco's work.

Black Kites (1997)

Orozco created Black Kites after he had a lung problem in 1996. He bought a human skull and spent months covering it with a checkerboard pattern using graphite. The pattern follows the skull's shape. This artwork shows the contrast between a strict pattern and a natural shape. It also reminds us of Mexican traditions that often feature skulls, making us think about life and death.

Recent Works (2000–Present)

Lintels (2001)

For this installation, Orozco collected dryer lint for a year. He then hung the fragile sheets of lint across a gallery room like clothes on a line. The lint contained hair, dust, and clothing particles. They would gently sway as people walked by. Lintels shows the leftover traces of human presence. It's similar to his earlier work Yielding Stone, as both pieces continue to change by collecting new dust and debris.

Samurai Tree Paintings (2004)

In 2004, Orozco started making geometric abstract paintings. They featured circular shapes and designs, similar to ideas he had sketched for years. He used computer software to draw circles and divide them into sections. He then painted these sections in red, blue, white, or gold. Circles are very important in Orozco's art, representing movement. In these paintings, the circles seem to spin outwards from a central point.

Corplegados (2011)

Corplegados means "folded bodies." These are large drawings Orozco made between 2007 and 2011. He would fold up big sheets of paper and take them with him on his travels. He drew, painted, and wrote all over them. The colors and layers soaked through the paper, creating a ghostly image on the back. These drawings were shown in glass frames that let viewers see both sides. The drawings show different feelings and changes the artist experienced over time.

Exhibitions and Collections

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York had a solo show of Orozco's art in 1993. They also held a big exhibition of his work in December 2009. This show traveled to other famous museums around the world, including the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Tate Modern in London, ending in May 2011.

Gabriel Orozco is planning a major exhibition in Mexico City at Museo Jumex in 2025. It will be his first museum show in Mexico since 2006.

His art is also part of the permanent collections of many museums. These include the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate in London, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Spain.

Films About Gabriel Orozco

• Art:21 Film on Gabriel Orozco, 2003
• Gabriel Orozco, 2002, directed by Juan Carlos Martin

See also

In Spanish: Gabriel Orozco para niños