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Lot Essay
“The circle is a very useful Instrument in terms of movement...” (G. Orozco, quoted in B. Buchloh ‘Gabriel Orozco in conversation with Benjamin Buchloh,’ The Experience of Art: 51st International Art Exhibition, exh. cat., Venice Biennale, Venice, 2005)
In Atomist Ascension, red, green and white half-circles and ovoids obscure the center of an image, hiding the action, while offsetting the picture’s formal qualities, namely the green, red and white of the players’ uniforms. With the narrative aspects of the image covered, the player on the right appears to be mid-flight with arms outstretched. To compose the work, Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco cut out images of sportsmen from newspapers and blew them up to human scale. Orozco then applied the abstract language of circles, ovoids and ellipses, subdivided into halves and quarters, that comprise the foundation of the artist’s painting lexicon and overlaid these forms on the original image. This photograph and the series it is a part of are named Atomists for the school of ancient Greek philosophy that first theorized the existence of atoms, as tiny particles in motion that undergirded all the world’s elements. As such, the collision of abstraction and figuration enhances the dynamism of the composition, suggesting an ever-changing state of motion, a greater cosmic order and an invisible world made visible through the artist’s intervention.
Works such as Atomist Ascension were originally made for an exhibition called The Empty Club held at the Devonshire Club, a defunct private members’ club in the prestigious St. James's Street district in London. Organized by Artangel, a roving exhibition venue that pops-up at unexpected sites across the world, Orozco points to the space’s former life as an exclusive leisure spot, as a place that would have displayed hunting pictures and paintings of other sportsmen’s games on its walls. The work functions as a subtle institutional critique of the exhibition space and spaces like it, as a private place where only a select few can gather.
With its pairing of abstract forms with found images, The Atomist Ascension echoes other aspects of the artist practice. Since the early 1990s, Orozco has used found, everyday materials in extraordinary ways to challenge one’s experience of reality and bring attention to the ephemeral, anonymous or seemingly inconsequential aspects of life. Orozco often enacts the role of the flâneur, or the nomad, moving through a place and inspired by chance encounters. His work traverses the mediums of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and installation, and includes the spaces of its display to pushing the line between art and life.
In Atomist Ascension, red, green and white half-circles and ovoids obscure the center of an image, hiding the action, while offsetting the picture’s formal qualities, namely the green, red and white of the players’ uniforms. With the narrative aspects of the image covered, the player on the right appears to be mid-flight with arms outstretched. To compose the work, Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco cut out images of sportsmen from newspapers and blew them up to human scale. Orozco then applied the abstract language of circles, ovoids and ellipses, subdivided into halves and quarters, that comprise the foundation of the artist’s painting lexicon and overlaid these forms on the original image. This photograph and the series it is a part of are named Atomists for the school of ancient Greek philosophy that first theorized the existence of atoms, as tiny particles in motion that undergirded all the world’s elements. As such, the collision of abstraction and figuration enhances the dynamism of the composition, suggesting an ever-changing state of motion, a greater cosmic order and an invisible world made visible through the artist’s intervention.
Works such as Atomist Ascension were originally made for an exhibition called The Empty Club held at the Devonshire Club, a defunct private members’ club in the prestigious St. James's Street district in London. Organized by Artangel, a roving exhibition venue that pops-up at unexpected sites across the world, Orozco points to the space’s former life as an exclusive leisure spot, as a place that would have displayed hunting pictures and paintings of other sportsmen’s games on its walls. The work functions as a subtle institutional critique of the exhibition space and spaces like it, as a private place where only a select few can gather.
With its pairing of abstract forms with found images, The Atomist Ascension echoes other aspects of the artist practice. Since the early 1990s, Orozco has used found, everyday materials in extraordinary ways to challenge one’s experience of reality and bring attention to the ephemeral, anonymous or seemingly inconsequential aspects of life. Orozco often enacts the role of the flâneur, or the nomad, moving through a place and inspired by chance encounters. His work traverses the mediums of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and installation, and includes the spaces of its display to pushing the line between art and life.