Gabriel Orozco

Art Brokerage: Gabriel Orozco Mexican Artist: b. 1962. He (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist, called "one of the most influential artists of this decade, and probably the next one too." He was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and educated in the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984. He then continued his education in Madrid at the Circulo de Bellas Artes between 1986 and 1987. A constant world traveler since 1991, Orozco and wife Maria Gutierrez, along with their son Simón, divide their time between Paris, New York and Mexico City. Orozco's exploration of the use of video, drawings, and installations in addition to his photographs and sculptures, allows the audience's imagination to explore the creative associations between oft-ignored objects in today's world. His work permits a rarely allowed interaction between the artwork and the audience. For instance, visitors at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, California could play a four person game of table tennis on Orozco's Ping Pond Table (1998). The work's center is a lily pond with four hemispherical ping pong table pieces arranged in a clover shape around it. At his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1993, Orozco's Home Run piece featured oranges placed in the windows of adjacent apartment buildings. For the 1993 Venice Biennale Orozco placed a shoe box on the floor of the Aperto. What is most important is not so much what people see in the gallery or the museum, but what people see after looking at these things, how they confront reality again. Gabriel Orozco from an interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh in the catalogue Gabriel Orozco: Clinton is Innocent. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Orozco has participated in the Venice Biennale in 1993, 2003, and 2005, the Whitney Biennial (1995 and 1997), as well as Documenta X (1997) and Documenta XI (2002). He has received numerous awards, including the Seccio Espacios Alternativos prize at the Salon Nacional de Artes Plasticas in Mexico City (1987), a DAAD artist-in-residence grant in Berlin (1995), and the German Blue Orange prize (2006). Listings wanted.