Gabriel Orozco Thinking in Circles
Edinburgh Art Festival Exhibition 1 August – 18 October 2013
Gabriel Orozco (born Jalapa, Veracruz, 1962) is one of the foremost international artists of our age. Rising to prominence in the early 1990s, he has developed a consistently innovative practice, making work which not only captures the imagination but also powerfully engages with key material and conceptual issues of what it is to make art.
This new exhibition took the 2005 painting The Eye of Go as its starting point, and looked at how the circular geometric motif of this painting – part of a way of thinking for Orozco, a way to organise ideas of structure, organisation and perspective – migrates onto other work, recurring in other paintings, sculptures and photographs. A highlight of the exhibition was a series of large geometric works on acetate, made in the mid 1990s, yet never before exhibited. Rather than surveying the whole range of Orozco’s practice, the exhibition seemed to cut a conceptual slice through it, to look deeply into the mechanics of the artist’s thinking and working process. Not only did the exhibition propose a different view of Orozco’s major contribution to changes in art in the 90s but it brought to the fore the urgent problem of art’s ‘makeability’ now.
Gabriel Orozco Webfilm
Talks and Events
Panel Discussion Gabriel Orozco, Briony Fer, Benjamin Buchloh
Gabriel Orozco in conversation with exhibition curator Professor Briony Fer (UCL) and art historian Professor Benjamin Buchloh (Harvard University).
Geometry and Abjection
Professor Margaret Iversen (University of Essex) considers the tension in Orozco’s work between the abstract or diagrammatic on the one hand, and the trace or residue on the other.
Resources
Exhibition Bulletin (pdf)
Exhibition Guide (pdf)
Learning Through Exhibitions (pdf)
Related items
Exhibition Poster
This poster was designed by The Fruitmarket Gallery to support the Gabriel Orozco Thinking in Circles exhibition which ran from 1 August – 18 October 2013.
Exhibition DVD
This DVD features Gabriel Orozco in conversation with Briony Fer, curator of Thinking in Circles.
Fruitmarket Gallery Publication
Published by The Fruitmarket Gallery to accompany the exhibition, this major book by curator Briony Fer focuses on the themes and ideas in the exhibition. Placing the work, ‘The Eye of Go‘, at the centre of her thought, Fer asks how far it is possible to think with the work rather than about it.
