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Lot Essay
'Circling, shattering: these are ways to disappear into space without ever reaching the limits of sculpture' (G. Orozco, quoted in B. Fer, Gabriel Orozco, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2004, p. 13).
Spanning two square metres, Gabriel Orozco's monumental painting Spinning Spiral shines in shimmering gold, royal blue, scarlet red and brilliant white. A significant moment in the artist's career, the present work was painted in 2005, the same year as his participation in the Venice Biennale and his important solo exhibition at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and Palacio Cristal, Madrid. Painted soon after his critically recognized return to painting in 2004, Spinning Spiral is a natural progression of his seminal series of Samurai Tree paintings, which were presented to critical acclaim at his 2004 solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
Furthering Orozco's ongoing exploration into spatial, geometric and organic processes, Spinning Spiral radiates from a single central axis, from which gilded circles replicate outwards. From this measured waltz, the burnished bodies collide and intersect, proliferating the canvas in a rich configuration of dazzling red, gold, blue and white. The apparently geometric spheres expose slight variations in their mirroring; dipping in slightly at its middle, revealing the human aspect to the otherwise mathematically gridded formulaic composition. Similarly, in the negative spaces between circles, the geometric interstices seem to metamorphose, suggesting how inconsistent and fragmented common knowledge is in reality.
An important, unifying thread throughout Orozco's practice, the spherical motif recalls those rotating forms depicted on his currency and airline ticket drawings which Orozco began in 1995 such as Light Signs (Korea) made for the Kwangju Biennale and Atomists (1996). Orozco has said, 'the circle for me is a very useful instrument in terms of movement, in relation to gravity and erosion. It's the tendency of objects when they're in movement and are eroded by friction... I decided to do [the paintings] to see how much they could express geometry but also organicity... I decided to start from the centre of the plane, which I think is not very common. I started from the minimal point of the centre, and then developed the structure towards the frame as the limit... Even though I was curious to explore the possibilities of abstraction, I don't quite think in terms of abstraction in art. I think in terms of fields connected through this structure, making this a geometric field in which, when you look at it, you become aware of something that is obviously very abstract. But it's also something that sounds as if it is, or can be logical in relation to an organism, or in relation to how things grow or happen, in relation to abstract thinking itself, in relation to instruments, in relation to mechanicity, in relation to our body' (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).
At once both a highly engrossing intellectual and philosophical statement and a ravishing visual experience, Spinning Spiral shares a conceptual relationship with the artist's celebrated series, Samurai Tree, which represents the most ambitious and complex completed project of his extraordinarily varied career. In Samurai Trees, the organic progression of the circle similarly arises from a central point, but here is defined by the possible moves a knight makes across a chessboard - one forward, and two to the side or two squares forward and one to the side until the whole canvas is completed. With its calculated arrangement of forms and refined execution, Spinning Spiral appears reminiscent of the geometric abstraction undertaken by Piet Mondrian or Ellsworth Kelly; yet Orozco emphasises a fundamental difference. Unlike those painters before him, he is 'trying to deal with the rotation of a body inside a flat plane. Not in the illusion of the body, but in the conceptual representation of an image. It is an abstraction, but not one that claims to be just a material phenomenon, but to be dealing with something else at the same time. Three-dimensionality, gravity, movement, light, symmetry, the organic and so on - that is, all the same issues I am dealing with in sculpture and photography. So it is very different from abstract painting or minimalism. It is not about visuality' (G. Orozco interview with B. Fer, Gabriel Orozco, exh. cat., Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2006, p. 109).
Spanning two square metres, Gabriel Orozco's monumental painting Spinning Spiral shines in shimmering gold, royal blue, scarlet red and brilliant white. A significant moment in the artist's career, the present work was painted in 2005, the same year as his participation in the Venice Biennale and his important solo exhibition at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and Palacio Cristal, Madrid. Painted soon after his critically recognized return to painting in 2004, Spinning Spiral is a natural progression of his seminal series of Samurai Tree paintings, which were presented to critical acclaim at his 2004 solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
Furthering Orozco's ongoing exploration into spatial, geometric and organic processes, Spinning Spiral radiates from a single central axis, from which gilded circles replicate outwards. From this measured waltz, the burnished bodies collide and intersect, proliferating the canvas in a rich configuration of dazzling red, gold, blue and white. The apparently geometric spheres expose slight variations in their mirroring; dipping in slightly at its middle, revealing the human aspect to the otherwise mathematically gridded formulaic composition. Similarly, in the negative spaces between circles, the geometric interstices seem to metamorphose, suggesting how inconsistent and fragmented common knowledge is in reality.
An important, unifying thread throughout Orozco's practice, the spherical motif recalls those rotating forms depicted on his currency and airline ticket drawings which Orozco began in 1995 such as Light Signs (Korea) made for the Kwangju Biennale and Atomists (1996). Orozco has said, 'the circle for me is a very useful instrument in terms of movement, in relation to gravity and erosion. It's the tendency of objects when they're in movement and are eroded by friction... I decided to do [the paintings] to see how much they could express geometry but also organicity... I decided to start from the centre of the plane, which I think is not very common. I started from the minimal point of the centre, and then developed the structure towards the frame as the limit... Even though I was curious to explore the possibilities of abstraction, I don't quite think in terms of abstraction in art. I think in terms of fields connected through this structure, making this a geometric field in which, when you look at it, you become aware of something that is obviously very abstract. But it's also something that sounds as if it is, or can be logical in relation to an organism, or in relation to how things grow or happen, in relation to abstract thinking itself, in relation to instruments, in relation to mechanicity, in relation to our body' (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).
At once both a highly engrossing intellectual and philosophical statement and a ravishing visual experience, Spinning Spiral shares a conceptual relationship with the artist's celebrated series, Samurai Tree, which represents the most ambitious and complex completed project of his extraordinarily varied career. In Samurai Trees, the organic progression of the circle similarly arises from a central point, but here is defined by the possible moves a knight makes across a chessboard - one forward, and two to the side or two squares forward and one to the side until the whole canvas is completed. With its calculated arrangement of forms and refined execution, Spinning Spiral appears reminiscent of the geometric abstraction undertaken by Piet Mondrian or Ellsworth Kelly; yet Orozco emphasises a fundamental difference. Unlike those painters before him, he is 'trying to deal with the rotation of a body inside a flat plane. Not in the illusion of the body, but in the conceptual representation of an image. It is an abstraction, but not one that claims to be just a material phenomenon, but to be dealing with something else at the same time. Three-dimensionality, gravity, movement, light, symmetry, the organic and so on - that is, all the same issues I am dealing with in sculpture and photography. So it is very different from abstract painting or minimalism. It is not about visuality' (G. Orozco interview with B. Fer, Gabriel Orozco, exh. cat., Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2006, p. 109).