Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco is a renowned Mexican artist. He rose to prominence in the early 1990s through his innovative exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture, and installation.

Biography of Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco was born in 1962 in Veracruz, Mexico. When Orozco was six, the family moved to the San Ángel neighborhood of Mexico City so that his father could collaborate with artist David Alfaro Siqueiros on several mural projects. Orozco often accompanied his father to museum exhibitions and his workplace, where he absorbed numerous discussions about art and politics.

Orozco studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas from 1981 to 1984 but found the program conservative. Seeking a more innovative approach, he moved to Madrid in 1986 and enrolled at the Circulo de Bellas Artes. There, his instructors exposed him to a diverse array of post-war artists exploring non-traditional formats.

In 1987, Orozco returned to Mexico City from his studies in Madrid. There, he initiated weekly gatherings with a cohort of fellow artists, including Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri, Abraham Cruzvillegas, and Dr. Lakra. These gatherings continued for five years, during which Orozco's home evolved into a hub where numerous artistic and cultural initiatives blossomed.

In 1995, he worked in Berlin supported by a grant from the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst.

Gabriel Orozco received the BlueOrange Prize in 2006 and the Cultural Achievement Award in 2014.

His solo exhibitions have been held at prestigious venues worldwide, such as Kurimanzutto, Marian Goodman Gallery, Galerie Chantal Crousel, White Cube, Rat Hole Gallery, Aspen Art Museum, Tate Modern, and many more. Moreover, Orozco's works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including "À toi de faire, ma mignonne" at Musée Picasso in Paris (2023), "Histoires de pierres" at Villa Medici in Rome (2023), "Cosmogonie II. Devenir Fleurs" at MAMAC in Nice (2022), "The Dream of the Museum" at M+ in Hong Kong (2021), among others. 

Gabriel Orozco's Art Style

Continuously mobile and eschewing a fixed studio, Gabriel Orozco dismisses national or regional affiliations and instead derives inspiration from the places he inhabits and explores. He channels this inspiration into his work, which spans photography, sculpture, painting, and video.

His art is defined by a profound fascination with the urban environment and the human form. Everyday incidents and the mundane, imbued with the poetry of chance and paradox, serve as rich fodder for his creations. Movement, growth, circularity, and the interplay between geometric and organic elements have consistently driven his artistic exploration for more than two decades.

Transitioning seamlessly from one project to the next, he purposefully blurs the lines separating the art object from everyday surroundings. His contributions inhabit a realm where "art" and "reality" converge, whether manifested in intricate drawings on airplane boarding passes or sculptures crafted from recovered waste.

Many of Orozco's works, often tailored for specific exhibitions, have attained iconic status in 1990s art. Examples include the surgically altered Citroën automobile, reduced to two-thirds its original width ("La DS," 1993), and a human skull adorned with a graphite grid ("Black Kites," 1997).