Kurimanzutto, Mexico City Acquired from the above by the present owner
Catalogue Essay
Created in celebration of the Kurimanzutto Gallery’s grand opening in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City in 2000, Orozco’s Mixote was presented as part of a pop-up satellite exhibition in a local street market in an effort to cultivate wider cultural appeal. Though these guerilla tactics have become commonplace in today’s economy, the initiative was at the time a radical idea that in many ways epitomized the groundbreaking agenda of this generation of Mexican artists. In creating works that could be made by materials purchased in the market itself, the artist reinvigorated these otherwise ordinary items by explicitly presenting them within a socio-political context.
Gabriel Orozco's diverse practice, which includes sculpture, photography, painting and video, is centered on the rejection of the concept of a traditional studio. Alternatively, Orozco's conceptual process involves using quotidian objects as commentary on urban society. In the widely exhibited La DS (1993), Orozco cut a Citroën DS car into thirds, eliminating the central section and reconfiguring the remaining parts.
Another important motif in Orozco's lexicon is that of the colored ellipses. In his seminal series, Samurai Tree Invariants, the artist employs fragmented colored circles as the basis for geometric compositions, exploring the movements made by a knight on a chessboard. These not only represent Orozco's conceptual practices but illustrate his interest in both the geometric and organic world.