Gabriel Orozco
Born 1962, Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
Lives and works in New York and Mexico City

Gabriel Orozco poetically addresses our relationship to common objects, creating a metaphor for our contemporary condition of transience through both time and place. His appropriation and subsequent alteration of familiar objects such as a ping pong table, an airplane ticket, or a denomination of currency require the viewer to re-examine everyday interactions and see these objects as symbols of our social exchanges and geographical mobility. While Ping Pond Table is formed from a number of predetermined elements, both its meaning and its spatial organization are subject to unpredictable and indefinite variation when literally put into play by the viewer/participant. 

Gabriel Orozco, Ping Pond Table, 1998,  (installation view)

Gabriel Orozco’s work has been featured in recent international exhibitions, including 1st Kwangju Biennale (1995); Everything That’s Interesting Is New, Deste Foundation, Athens, in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (1996); Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, documenta X, Kassel, and Sculpture. Projects in Münster 1997, Westfälisches Landesmuseum (1997); XXIV Bienal de São Paulo and Berlin Biennial (1998); and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (1999). Orozco has presented solo exhibitions since 1993, including shows at Museum of Modern Art, New York (1993); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1994); Marian Goodman Gallery, New York (1996, 1998); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, an Artangel project entitled Empty Club, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and Kunsthalle, Zurich (1996); DAAD Gallery, Berlin, Staatlichen Museum am Kulturforum, Berlin, and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1997); and Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and St. Louis Museum of Art, Missouri (1998).

Education
1981-84 Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, U.N.A.M., Mexico

1986-87 Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid

Selected Further Reading
Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Gabriel Orozco (Clinton is Innocent) (1998). Exhibition catalogue, text by Francesco Bonami and interview by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.

Orozco, Gabriel. “Gabriel Orozco: Technique de l’Énergie, The Power to Transform.” Interview by Robert Storr. Art Press 225 (June 1997): 20-27.

Artangel, London. Empty Club (1996). Exhibition catalogue, texts by James Lingwood, Jean Fisher, Mark Haworth-Booth, and Guy Brett.

Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and Deutscher Akade- mischer Austauschdienst Berliner Künstlerprogramm, Germany. Gabriel Orozco (1996). Exhibition catalogue, texts by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Bernhard Bürgi.

Kanaal Art Foundation, Kortrijk, Belgium, in association with La Vaca Independiente Promoci—n de Arte y Cultura, Mexico City, and Les Éditions la Chambre, Ghent, Belgium. Gabriel Orozco (1993). Exhibition catalogue, edited by M. Catherine de Zegher, texts by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Jean Fisher.