It is not uncommon for the name of Gabriel Orozco to be present in the previous and later days of the Art Week for several years in Mexico City. This 2025, in particular, does so with its first exhibition in a Mexican museum after almost twenty years of the closest, in the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts in December 2006.
It is called the National Polytechnic and the public will be exhibited from February 1 to August 3 at the Jumex Museum, where the one that is considered by Gabriel Orozoco himself (Xalapa, 1962) will be offered as the largest exhibition of his career, even more Great that the corresponding and dedicated to the Mexican contemporary artist at the MoMa Museum and the Center Pompidou in 2010 and the Tate Gallery in 2011.
Photographs, facilities, ready – mades, interventions, structures, sculptures and oils, from 80 to recent years, integrate the exhibition of more than 300 intervened objects, recovered, created or suggested by the Veracruz artist.
There are well -known works, such as the Citröen DS DS Reduced Size car to more than half of its thick Jumex Museum, but above all many photographs taken by Orozco between the 1990s and the first decade of the present century.
Of course, it is necessary to highlight the exhibition of one of the whale skeletons intervened by the artist, the piece “Dark Wave” (2006), a twin work of “Mátrix Mobile”, made by public commission to decorate the Basque Conceiver Library that same year that same year .
And the “EMPTY shoe box” could not be missing (Empty Shoes Box, 1993) that so many conversations has generated over three decades and with which it is easy to stumble into gallery 2 of the Jumex Museum.
In the basement of the enclosure on Cervantes Avenue in Saavedra, the artist installed a screen on which dozens of criticism, the press and other communication routes about his work are transmitted, from the most acidic accusations, to the most Empatheic This part of the sample called “compost.”
Difficult, see something the same
It is not a retrospective sample, but a more stratified review of his work, divided according to the air, water or earth elements.
“Although I did these pieces, I enjoyed visiting them and playing again with them, to read them with a fresh look and that I hope that all of you, those who know my work before or those who just saw it for the first time, They can review it, understand it, question it as always should be done, but at the same time, continue to understand that art is to do things and try to do their best. ”
And he continued: “I remember how 20 years ago people continued wondering whether or not this was art. Of course, it is a question that we are going to be doing all the time, because art is changing. Things that at the time were fortunate to be considered works of art, over time they can cease to be, and things that were not considered art, suddenly, are reviewed and transformed into works of art. ”
Orozco acknowledged the will of businessman Eugenio López, founder of the Jumex Museum, to house an exhibition of this mood.
“When Eugenio invited me to expose here, he told me: ‘You have the whole museum, do what you want, everything,” said the artist, captivated with the will of the promoter of the museum and his exhibition.
“I have known Eugenio for a long time and,” he let a considerable pause slide and he was hesitant, to connect: “I think so, definitely, I will not see this exhibition in the next twenty years. Maybe, the next time something like that happens, I’m not going to be here anymore, so you have to enjoy it. ”
A Polytechnic Artist
Gabriel Orozco is a graduate of plastic arts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Then, he explains why he decided on the title of the exhibition, National Polytechnic.
“It was lucky to find the title of the exhibition; It was my idea. I thought: Let’s see, I am doing an exhibition by returning to my country (after almost 20 years) to show all my work, so diverse, that I have done in so many parts of the world, and, as you know, I am a graduate of the UNAM. But suddenly I realized that over time I became a Polytechnic. Of course, the national word is in a certain ironic way because one can think that most of my work and my exhibitions have been out of Mexico (…) and I think that is the most significant part of the exhibition, to be able to show that diversity of techniques ”.
Finally, the artist was moved with the following words: “What covers this exhibition is something that has not happened and probably will not be easy for it to happen again. At first I thought it was very long that the exhibition was going to last, but after seeing all the effort that was to make it, I am pleased to last six months. I hope many people can see it. ”
National Polytechnic
- Jumex Museum
- Artist: Gabriel Orozco
- From February 1 to August 3, 2025
- Address: Blvd. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 303, Granada, Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City
