Orozco MoMA exhibit thinks outside of the ‘Shoe Box’

As viewers pass through the white entryway of the Gabriel Orozco exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, they are greeted by trash—more specifically, a single shoebox, laying abandoned at their feet.

This piece, appropriately titled “Empty Shoe Box,” is one of the many Orozco works that confuse and surprise the viewer. Within the first few minutes of being in this almost surreal exhibition, viewers’ expectations of an art exhibit are dashed. Orozco is not your typical artist. His work, ranging from spit on graph paper to a painted human skull, is odd and intriguing, frustrating and comical.

Orozco likes to push the boundaries of what defines sculpture, and play with the viewer’s reaction to his assortment of materials. Walking through his mishmash of recycled art, it is easy to feel lost without the audio tour. The objects on display seem bizarre and fascinating, but don’t readily give themselves to the label “art.” However, with Orozco’s own lulling (and pretty sexy) voice guiding the tour, one is able to see these objects as he sees them—as something bigger than just whimsical confusion.

The aforementioned skull is a piece titled “Black Kites.” It is a human skull, patterned with graphite details of black diamond shapes. Orozco drew on the human skull over a series of weeks while on bed rest for a collapsed lung. “A lot of my work has to do with time…for me that is very important, the timing of perception and awareness,” Orozco said. “‘Black Kites’ has that concentration of time, for an object that is not very big it is very powerful,” he said.

Studying the delicate skull, students can easily see why Orozco stands out from the seemingly spontaneously driven artists of our time. “Black Kites” is not about attention-seeking, modernist experimentation. It is quiet and thoughtful, representing one man’s reflection on a symbol of death, after having come very close to the reality himself.

All of Orozco’s works on display at the MoMA have the quiet, complex irony of “Black Kites.” Orozco’s exhibit is worth visiting, if only to experience seeing the world through the artist’s enchanted gaze, where unsuspecting objects are transformed into unique, thought-provoking works, and a small, nondescript piece of cardboard is much more than just a shoebox.