Among the different sculptural approaches that Gabriel Orozco has put into play in his work, the aspect related to the materials from nature stands out. The decisions in the selection and modification of these elements reflect, in different ways, his constant interest in the tensions between nature and culture.
'Brainstone' (2013) is part of a series in which the artist carved various river stones found in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. Long shaped by time and in a natural way, they were modified by the artist out of different formal explorations and relationships of meaning. The result consists of a series of sculptures that show their intermediate condition between the natural inert and cultural intervention between the organic and the designed. 'Brainstone' is an impossible shape as are 'Symmetrical Drops' (2013), 'Tortoise Stone' (2013) and 'Fish Bird' (2013).
The series was originally developed for presentation at the Gabriel Orozco show 'Natural Motion', presented in 2013 at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria and at the Moderna Museet in Sweden. This exhibition highlights the way in which the artist's sculptural work simultaneously refers to ancient techniques and motifs from Mexico and the Latin American region, as well as artistic strategies of modernism.
“The rounded stones are a variation of a theme to which the artist constantly returns: the circle as the principle of things, and all its derivatives such as the sphere, the ball, the disk, the wheel, the planet, an orbit. They are bodies that speak of what the circle speaks: mobility, cycles, games, amplitude, rotation. Its natural shape and beauty persist, while the carved geometric patterns allow for a tactile and visual comparison of the textures that exist within the rock and its history of natural movement: the rough outer crust eroded by nature versus the polished inner surfaces carved by man. But what undermines the original materiality of the stone is precisely what increases the meaning of the work (it ceases to be stone to become sculpture)", the curators of the exhibition, Yilmaz Dziewior and Rudolf Sagmeister, explained about the series.
As the artist explained then, the process of finding, painting and carving the stones allows him to be part of the natural movement of the object in both time and space. In this regard, if it is looked back on from this relationship with the materials, this piece and the series of which it is a part could be thought of in relation to earlier and more recognized works of the artist, such as 'My Hands are my Heart' (1991), visual and ritual evidence of the strength of the artist's hands on a piece of clay, and 'Black Kites' (1997), where he set himself the task of drawing a grid of graphite squares and diamonds on the organic surface of a skull.
References
“Gabriel Orozco: La escultura de la vida cotidiana”, in H. D. Benjamin Buchloh et al., Gabriel Orozco, Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich, 1996.
Regarding his exhibition in the Moderna Museet, en Suecia:
https://saladeprensa.sre.gob.mx/index.php/lista-de-embajadas/suecia/3700-embamex-sue
Extract from Dagens Nyheter, Matilda Källén, “Orozco rör sig mellan naturen och kulturen”: http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/orozco-ror-sig-mellan-naturen-och-kulturen/
https://kmlibros.kurimanzutto.com/products/natural-motion
http://kulturhaeat.srv56.adino.at/web/kunsthaus-bregenz.at/html/welcome00.htm?aus_orozco.htm
