gabriel orozco
A selection of Gabriel Orozco's publications
On the occasion of Gabriel Orozco’s solo exhibition at kurimanzutto, Mexico City, we share a selection of his publications to date. From monographs to exhibition catalogues and artists’ books, a total of 46 books dedicated to Orozco’s work have been published over the past three decades. The thematically arranged selection invites a renewed examination of his practice through the publication format, serving as a testament of his sustained engagement with the possibilities embedded within the language of books.
Orozco as Gatherer
From left to right: Gabriel Orozco: From Green Glass to Airplane Recordings (Amsterdam: Artimo Foundation and Stedelijk Museum, 2001); Asterisms: Gabriel Orozco (Berlin: Guggenheim, 2012); Mexico in Words: Selected by Gabriel Orozco (Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2015)
Spread from From Green Glass to Airplane Recordings (2001)
Guided by the anti-spectacular quality of the everyday, many of Orozco’s publications gather examples of how he establishes relations between varying elements –events, objects, and even literary authors– that may not be apparent at first glance. Born in Mexico in 1962, he has charted these connections across the different places where he’s lived, including Tokyo, Mexico City, New York and Paris. This aspect of his practice, more akin to that of a collector or a gatherer of associations, can be appreciated in From Green Glass to Airplane Recordings (2001), a catalogue that presents over 200 stills taken from five color video works that Orozco exhibited in his 1997 solo exhibition Recordings and Drawings at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. To look through the book is to be transported behind Orozco’s camera when he filmed these videos earlier that same year in Amsterdam and New York. Each page captures an ordinary event in an urban setting–a plastic bag tightly wrapped around a bicycle seat, or the wake of an airplane against a clear blue sky–condensing a moment of awareness through an image, in which the specificities of each location become blurred.
Spreads from Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen, Gabriel Orozco: From Green Glass to Airplane Recordings (Amsterdam: Artimo Foundation y Stedelijk Museum, 2001)
Starting in the 1980s, Orozco had begun photographing ordinary objects either as he encountered them on the street, or subtly intervened by the artist to create fleeting compositions he could document with his camera. Against this background, his exploration of the video format developed from his interest in “the liquidity of things, how one thing leads you on to the next” – shaping how one thing is immediately perceived before or after something else, and what relations emerge from “being next to each other.” [1]
Detail from Asterisms (2012)
In 2012, Orozco extended this approach even further by collecting, displaying, and rigorously photographing thousands of items of detritus for his installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The objects were gathered by the artist, ranging from minuscule pieces of chewing gum, coins, and broken zippers discarded at a playing field in New York near his home, to large pieces of refuse including glass bottles, lightbulbs, buoys, stones, and oars, which had washed aground at a coastal biosphere and wildlife sanctuary in Baja California, Mexico. In the Asterisms exhibition catalogue, Orozco records his taxonomic investigation of these different geographies, documenting the 1,200 found objects from each site along with the photographic grids portraying each one arranged by material, shape, size and color. Accompanied by an essay written by curator Nancy Spector, the book becomes both an extension of the project and a window into Orozco’s selection process at both places.
Spreads from Nancy Spector and Joan Young.Gabriel Orozco: Asterisms (Berlin: Guggenheim, 2012)
Published to accompany a series of discussions Orozco curated and moderated at the 2015 Edinburgh International Book Festival, Mexico in Words contains a selection of texts by Mexican authors brought together by the artist. Guided by his own reading preferences, Orozco gathered translated short stories, poems, and essays by Eduardo Antonio Parra, Pablo Soler Frost, Juan Villoro, Sergio González Rodríguez, Mónica de la Torre, Julián Herbert, and Gabriela Jauregui. The publication reads as a constellation of writings marked by originality and humor, giving international readers a chance to discover a new wave of Mexican authors notable for “the profoundness and sharpness with which they treat serious subject matter…” [2]
Artists' Books & Portfolios
From left to right: Triunfo de la libertad No. 18, Tlalpan, C.P. 1400. Edited by Hans-Ulrich Obrist (Stuttgart: Oktagon Verlag, 1995); Polvo Impreso. (Santa Monica: Jacob Samuel, 2002); The Samurai Tree Invariants (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2006)
Spread with sticker from Triunfo de la Libertad No. 18, Tlalpan, C.P. 1400 (1995)
In 1995, Orozco published his first artists’ book Triunfo de la Libertad No. 18, Tlalpan, C.P. 1400, a short publication made up entirely of photographs and edited by critic and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. The book, titled after the address of Orozco’s house in the south of Mexico City, comprises a visual essay where ordinary objects and scenes are stitched together. A pearl-like ball floating on water dances around the reflected sun amidst a cloud-infused sky; two plastic plates crowned with their grease-stained butcher’s paper gently rest on a volcanic rock; and the movements of a man water-pressure cleaning the side of a pool are but a few examples of the images that coalesce into visual patterns. Also included at the beginning of the book is a sticker of the concentric circles in red, yellow, white, and blue that would later become a trademark motif in his work.
Spreads from Gabriel Orozco: Triunfo de la libertad No. 18, Tlalpan, C.P. 1400. Edited by Hans-Ulrich Obrist (Stuttgart: Oktagon Verlag, 1995)
Etching from Polvo Impreso (2002)
Polvo Impreso (Lint Book, 2002) is a portfolio of twelve etchings made by imprinting layers of lint onto a copper plate. Collected from clothes dryers, the particles of dust and leftover textile fabrics also contain residues of skin and hair. Through these compositions, Orozco reflects on the passage of time and the different ways in which we choose to record it, as well as the power of dust to transform any surface on which it sits, accumulating patiently.
Etching from Polvo Impreso (2002)
The portfolio was printed by Jacob Samuel in Santa Monica in an edition of twenty-five. In the final lines of the short text that accompanies the portfolio, the artist asserts that Polvo Impreso is a book because of the format’s relationship to dust: “When it is open, like any book, dust flies away, and when we read it, like any book, we read an image in spite of dust.”[3]
Drawing inspiration from the Samurai move, or the Knight's move, in chess, the artists’ book The Samurai Tree Invariants (2006) explores the potential permutations resulting from a set of self-imposed rules crafted by Orozco to investigate the spatial and color possibilities of a structured system. Apart from the instructions to create these diagrams printed on the flaps, the book is dedicated to the 672 digital prints documenting the possible variations of this system, many of which Orozco has also realized as paintings. Working within such a strictly defined spatial and color framework, the resulting compositions in white, red, blue, and gold can be seen as flowing into one another, not unlike a flipbook. The above are but a few examples of the poetic and visually complex projects that Orozco unfolds within the pages of his editorial projects.
The three books in this section are evidence of the different ways in which Orozco’s practice has been dealt with in the publication format, allowing readers to see his work through the eyes of others, offering us various lenses to approach the last three decades of his artistic trajectory.
Pages from Gabriel Orozco, The Samurai Tree Invariants (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2006)
Through the Eyes of Others
Many art historians and critics have written about Orozco’s work, yielding volumes of interviews, critical essays, and exhibition reviews. The very first book dedicated to the artist was published in 1993, during his first solo exhibition held at the Kanaal Art Foundation in Kortrijk, Belgium, curated by M. Catherine de Zegher. The catalogue includes essays by art critic Jean Fisher and art historian Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, who later became one of Orozco’s conversation partners and commentators on his work. Both essays critically dissect Orozco’s then recent works, such as Mis manos son mi corazón (My Hands are My Heart, 1991), and Piedra que cede (Yielding Stone,1992), which are now considered two of his most iconic pieces.
From left to right: Gabriel Orozco (Kortrijk, Belgium: The Kanaal Art Foundation and La Vaca Independiente, 1993); El pájaro para principiantes (Los Angeles: MOCA, 2000); Thinking in Circles (Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 2013)
Detail from El Pájaro para principantes (2000)
Fellow artist Damián Ortega published El Pájaro para principantes (The Bird for Beginners, 2000) on the occasion of Orozco’s first major survey exhibition in the United States at MOCA, Los Angeles. The minibiography of Orozco takes the form of a comic book and is titled after the nickname given to the artist during his teenage years, The Bird. The unusual format of this publication, marked by an irreverent tone, combines Ortega’s drawings with a collage of cartoons from other authors to take a playful look at Orozco’s most emblematic works while also giving a brief history of contemporary art. Ortega connects Orozco’s practice with that of other artists like Helio Oiticica to consider the implications of the Latin American context for the art market and the cultural industry.
In 2013, art historian and curator Briony Fer, another one of Orozco’s longstanding interlocutors, curated a solo exhibition of his work at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. Taking the 2005 painting The Eye of GO as its starting point, Thinking in Circles delves into the artist's conceptual framework and creative process. Written in a warm and candid tone, each chapter of the catalogue takes us further into the curator’s exploration of Orozco’s work. Fer looks closely at the intricate mechanics underlying his use and application of the circle since the early 1990s, which extends to a wide array of found and made surfaces such as photographs, tickets, newspaper, money, bone, terracotta and stone. The publication reflects on the artist’s methodical approach, revealing how “one work, then, proliferates many,” as Fer writes, “one work can contain many different versions of itself which are made visible over time.” [4]
The three books in this section are evidence of the different ways in which Orozco’s practice has been dealt with in the publication format, allowing readers to see his work through the eyes of others, offering us various lenses to approach the last three decades of his artistic trajectory.
Spread from Thinking in Circles (2013)
Inside Out / Outside In
Some of Orozco’s publications have sought to record projects in which he pushes the limits of the conventional artist studio and gallery space, either by producing artwork outdoors and in collaboration with others, or by blurring the line between art and daily life to bring in the outside world.
From left to right: Gabriel Orozco en Villa Iris: Taller y exposición (Santander: Fundación Marcelino Botin, 2005); OROXXO (London: kurimanzutto and Koenig Books, 2018); The Orozco Garden at the South London Gallery (London: South London Gallery, 2021)
Invited by Fundación Botín, Orozco traveled to Santander in July 2005 and organized a twelve-day workshop for young artists in Villa Iris followed by an exhibition. The catalogue resulting from the residency, Gabriel Orozco en Villa Iris: Taller y exposición, contains three booklets dedicated to different aspects of the workshop and a DVD with short videos of the exercises he led with the participants: collecting pine needles and tracing them with graphite onto Japanese paper; dipping tennis balls in black paint and using them to draw on a canvas held out by other people, among others. One of the booklets comprises informal notes, and quotes from the workshop discussions, yielding a rare insight into Orozco’s pedagogical thinking.
Spread from OROXXO (2018)
The OROXXO catalogue (2018) documents Orozco’s previous exhibition at kurimanzutto, when he transformed the gallery into a fully operational OXXO, the most wide-spread chain of convenience stores in Mexico. As part of the project, he intervened over 300 daily household products with a sticker of the graphic geometric work for which he has become so well-known, displaying them both as regular goods on the store shelves and as artworks at the back of the gallery. A portrait of this ambitious exhibition emerges in the book through installation views, images of all of the intervened products, critical texts by writers Jori Finkel and Juan Villoro, as well as a conversation between scholars Luciano Concheiro and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh. The catalogue also includes the reactions inspired by the OROXXO, ranging from admiration to satire, in digital and print media, as well as in social media posts and memes.
Spreads from Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, et al. Gabriel Orozco: OROXXO (London: kurimanzutto and Koenig Books, 2018)
In 2016, Orozco unveiled the public garden he designed as a permanent artwork at the South London Gallery. Developed over the course of two years in collaboration with architects and horticulturalists, this commission plays on the idea of urban ruin, where nature is allowed to sprawl through and around the floor of Orozco’s intertwining stone circles. The Orozco Garden at the South London Gallery (2021) chronicles the thinking behind the artist’s first landscape commission. The book becomes a record of the entire project that includes reproductions of the artist’s drawings and sketches, architectural plans, and a fully illustrated plant index detailing over 50 species planted in the garden where additional plants and aromatic flora have flourished naturally.
Spreads from Briony Fer, Margot Heller, and Richard Wilford. The Orozco Garden at the South London Gallery (London: South London Gallery, 2021)
Notebooks & Diaries
From left to right: Diario de Plantas (Mexico City/ Brussels: Zolo Press, 2023); Materia escrita: cuadernos de trabajo, 1992–2012 (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2014); Written Matter: Work Notebooks, 1992–2012 (Cambridge: The MIT Press; London: Koenig Books, 2020)
Orozco uses his notebooks as a space for studying and thinking through ideas, whether at his desk or while traveling. They assumed an even more central role in his practice after he moved away from Mexico, becoming something closer to a dictionary of thoughts, a kind of studio to register ideas for current and future projects. Notes, lists, sketches, newspaper cuttings, transcriptions, diagrams, and pictures of his work fill their pages alongside actual leaves, flowers, and all kinds of other small things, collaged and bound between their hardcovers.
Alternating between transcribed diary entries and a couple scans of the original pages, Materia Escrita (2014) compiles a selection from his notebooks from 1992 to 2012. According to Orozco, he approached the editing process as a kind of sculptural work, not unlike starting with a block of stone and shaping it into something one could read.[5] The book was published first in Spanish and then in English as Written Matter (2020).
Spreads from Gabriel Orozco, Diario de Plantas (Mexico City/ Brussels: Zolo Press, 2023)
Spread from Diario de Plantas (2023)
The diary that would become Orozco’s most recent publication began in Tokyo during the COVID pandemic and continued in Acapulco and Mexico City. Containing a selection of 724 drawings that record the imprints and sketches of leaves he made between November 2021, and April 2022, Diario de Plantas (2023) reproduces this series of gouache, tempera, ink, and graphite works at their actual scale, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. Published as two hardcover volumes, the book gives us a chance to experience flipping through his diary and getting a glimpse of the artist’s daily practice as well as his enduring interest in landscape and the natural environment.
Orozco's exhibition at kurimanzutto presents a series of these framed drawings. Some as a single sheet but many of them in their original format: double-page spreads in a notebook that documents a form of vegetal, photosynthetic language – a kind of plant-thinking that grows into its own form of breathing and writing, with and in nature. Diario de Plantas is the latest example how Orozco has adapted his work to the book format. With each publication he explores how the printed page can convey and expand his artistic practice.
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[1] Gabriel Orozco, interviewed by Daniel Birnbaum, “1000 Words: Gabriel Orozco talks about his Films,” Artforum, Summer 1998, vol. 36, no. 10, 155.
[2] Gabriel Orozco, “Introduction,” in Mexico in Words: Selected by Gabriel Orozco (Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2015), 6.
[3] Gabriel Orozco, Lint Book (Santa Monica: Jacob Samuel, 2002).
[4] Briony Fer, Thinking in Circles (Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 2013), 138.
[5] Gabriel Orozco, in conversation with Briony Fer, An Island is a Circle (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König; New York: Marian Goodman Gallery, 2021), 119.
A display of Gabriel Orozco’s publications installed in the bookstore and available to all visitors at kurimanzutto, Mexico City
