Gabriel Orozco
15 Sep - 20 Oct 2007
GABRIEL OROZCO
"Dépliages"
“Dépliages” is the term Gabriel Orozco has chosen to name his new series of works on paper presented at Chantal Crousel Gallery this September. The process consists of depositing a drop of oil paint directly from the tube container in the center of a square piece of paper. This amount of paint, making a small cumulus, is the starting point on which the plane surface of the paper folds, generating internal currents in between the “pliages” (or foldings) due to the press of the fingers or the spatula. This pressure canalizes the current of liquid through the open spaces of the surface in the folded paper. Functioning as a kind of envelope, the paper becomes a container of the drop, with the painting circulating inside without spilling it out. Or as Gabriel Orozco decribes it : “The moment you fold the paper to become an envelope, it is an object, but then when you unfold it, it becomes an image, hidden in the envelope. There is a circular movement between an object and a picture, folded and unfolded”.
The unfolding, or “dépliage”, is the final step in which the unpredictable result is revealed. The texture of the paint is a kind of topography of the intensity of the pressure and the amount of paint in each zone of the surface, making this textures a kind of map, or body imprint, or asymmetrical Rorschach images that behaves like psycho-relieves unfolding many possible associations. The title for each piece is simply the registration of the exact time, date and place of the making of this folded drops on paper.
The terracotas presented here are the new results in the ongoing series that started three years ago and has continued parallel to Orozco’s various projects. In the work “Torso” (2007), made out of the folding and rolling of a mass of clay in the floor, the quantity of clay corresponds to the weight of the artist. The gravity force and the pressure of the artist own body in the folding and rolling of the mass, generates this body like shape, burned in the ashes that add the deep black colour at the end of the process. This similar process is applied in the making of the head that the artists hands rolls and imprint on a table, leaving the clay mass in an enigmatic and sensual shape.
The “face Imprint” or “Corner face” was made for the first time in 1993 in Paris at Chantal Crousel‘s private residence, where the artist was staying during the making of “la DS”. Never shown in public before, this gesture in the corner of a gallery wall, is related with a work like “la DS” in the continuous research of the artist on symmetry and turbulence, and the folding or collapsing of a body in space and time as much as the body in relation to the machine and the urban landscape. The traces of the fluid from the body in movement that generates the space in which the author never finishes to disappear, leaving is traces in the surfaces of many possible landscapes.
The “Samurai Tree” series are a continuous geometric research and proposition that has accompanied Orozco’s work since the early nineties. Today’s presentation includes an animation that shows a development of all the possible variations of the “Samurai tree” drawing using the rules of size and colour that the artist has proposed as a kind of board game rule, that describes geometrically the behaviour of his practice with objects and the everyday. The use of tempera painting on a gold guilded wooden support adds a specific objectual weight to this rather abstract research that the artist has been doing since years with quite diverse and surprising results.
"Dépliages"
“Dépliages” is the term Gabriel Orozco has chosen to name his new series of works on paper presented at Chantal Crousel Gallery this September. The process consists of depositing a drop of oil paint directly from the tube container in the center of a square piece of paper. This amount of paint, making a small cumulus, is the starting point on which the plane surface of the paper folds, generating internal currents in between the “pliages” (or foldings) due to the press of the fingers or the spatula. This pressure canalizes the current of liquid through the open spaces of the surface in the folded paper. Functioning as a kind of envelope, the paper becomes a container of the drop, with the painting circulating inside without spilling it out. Or as Gabriel Orozco decribes it : “The moment you fold the paper to become an envelope, it is an object, but then when you unfold it, it becomes an image, hidden in the envelope. There is a circular movement between an object and a picture, folded and unfolded”.
The unfolding, or “dépliage”, is the final step in which the unpredictable result is revealed. The texture of the paint is a kind of topography of the intensity of the pressure and the amount of paint in each zone of the surface, making this textures a kind of map, or body imprint, or asymmetrical Rorschach images that behaves like psycho-relieves unfolding many possible associations. The title for each piece is simply the registration of the exact time, date and place of the making of this folded drops on paper.
The terracotas presented here are the new results in the ongoing series that started three years ago and has continued parallel to Orozco’s various projects. In the work “Torso” (2007), made out of the folding and rolling of a mass of clay in the floor, the quantity of clay corresponds to the weight of the artist. The gravity force and the pressure of the artist own body in the folding and rolling of the mass, generates this body like shape, burned in the ashes that add the deep black colour at the end of the process. This similar process is applied in the making of the head that the artists hands rolls and imprint on a table, leaving the clay mass in an enigmatic and sensual shape.
The “face Imprint” or “Corner face” was made for the first time in 1993 in Paris at Chantal Crousel‘s private residence, where the artist was staying during the making of “la DS”. Never shown in public before, this gesture in the corner of a gallery wall, is related with a work like “la DS” in the continuous research of the artist on symmetry and turbulence, and the folding or collapsing of a body in space and time as much as the body in relation to the machine and the urban landscape. The traces of the fluid from the body in movement that generates the space in which the author never finishes to disappear, leaving is traces in the surfaces of many possible landscapes.
The “Samurai Tree” series are a continuous geometric research and proposition that has accompanied Orozco’s work since the early nineties. Today’s presentation includes an animation that shows a development of all the possible variations of the “Samurai tree” drawing using the rules of size and colour that the artist has proposed as a kind of board game rule, that describes geometrically the behaviour of his practice with objects and the everyday. The use of tempera painting on a gold guilded wooden support adds a specific objectual weight to this rather abstract research that the artist has been doing since years with quite diverse and surprising results.