Gabriel Orozco at Moma

Last week I saw the Gabriel Orozco show at The Museum of Modern Art. I was not familiar with Orozco’s work before seeing the show, but I was very impressed with the variation and sophistication of his work. The first piece that I saw was Mobile Matrix on the second floor. At first I felt as though I was in the Natural History Museum instead of at Moma, I walked around the entire piece and was struck by the beauty of the circles that radiated out from different joints and points on the whale, neatly overlapping. The graphite lines are thick and slightly dusty,against the stark white background of the bones the markings blend well. The display of the whale bones is very traditional, attached and suspended in air, but the graphite etchings provide surprising juxtaposition of the geometric lines of the marks and arches of the bones. Mobile Matrix grew on me the longer that I observed the piece from different angles, I appreciated the detail and scope of the matrix. Suspended in air, the whale looked light, and fluid like the snapshot of a graceful bird in a downward swoop. I think that mobile matrix exuded life and character. Bones in most cultures have a sacred quality, that the etchings challenging the expected blank surface in an innocent and playful way. It challenges the way that bones should be used, Orozco gives the figure of the whale a new life and confronts viewers with the massive remains of the foreign animal. The piece is very jarring in size,Orozco used 20 assistants and 6,000 pencil leads to create design on the matrix. The lighting on the Matrix creates a fascinating shadow of the ribs of the whale, underneath the figure. Many people were almost equally interested in the shadow as with the matrix.