Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 5, 2025: Gabriel Orozco, a Mexican artist, painter, sculptor, photographer (#2251)

Saturday, April 5, 2025

Artist of the Day, April 5, 2025: Gabriel Orozco, a Mexican artist, painter, sculptor, photographer (#2251)

Gabriel Orozco (1962) is a Mexican artist. He gained his reputation in the early 1990s for his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. In 1998, Francesco Bonami called Orozco "one of the most influential artists of this decade, and probably the next one too."

Early life and education
Orozco was born in 1962 in Veracruz, Mexico to Cristina Félix Romandía and Mario Orozco Rivera, a mural painter and art professor at the University of Veracruz.[citation needed] When Orozco was six, the family relocated to the San Ángel neighborhood of Mexico City so that his father could work with artist David Alfaro Siquieros on various mural commissions. His father took him along to museum exhibitions and to work with him, during which time Orozco overheard many conversations about art and politics.

Orozco attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984 but found the program too conservative.[citation needed] In 1986, he moved to Madrid and enrolled at the Circulo de Bellas Artes.[citation needed] There his instructors introduced him to a broad range of post-war artists who were working in non-traditional formats. He said of his time in Spain,
"What's important is to be confronted deeply with another culture. And also to feel that I am the Other, not the resident. That I am the immigrant. I was displaced and in a country where the relationship with Latin America is conflicted. I came from a background that was very progressive. And then to travel to Spain and confront a very conservative society that also wanted to be very avant-garde in the 1980s, but treated me as an immigrant, was shocking. That feeling of vulnerability was really important for developing my work. I think a lot of my work has to do with that kind of exposure, to expose vulnerability and make that your strength."

Career
In 1987, Orozco returned from his studies in Madrid to Mexico City, where he hosted weekly meetings with a group of other artists including Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri, Abraham Cruzvillegas and Dr. Lakra. This group met once a week for five years and over time the artist's home became a place where many artistic and cultural projects took shape.

Orozco's nomadic way of life began to inform his work strongly around this time, and he took considerable inspiration from exploring the streets. His early practice was intended to break away from the mainstream work of the 1980s, which was often created in huge studios with many assistants and elaborate techniques of production and distribution. In contrast, Orozco typically worked alone or with one or two other assistants. His work revolves around many repeated themes and techniques that incorporate real life and common objects. The exploration of his chosen materials allows the audience's imagination to explore the creative associations between oft-ignored objects in today's world.

In 1995 he worked in Berlin on a Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst grant.

"For him [Orozco], the decentralization of the manufacturing practice mirrors a rich heterogeneity of object and material. There is no way to identify a work by Orozco in terms of physical product. Instead it must be discerned through leitmotifs and strategies that constantly recur, but in always mutating forms and configurations." – Ann Temkin
© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Gabriel Orozco or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only