Unconventional Self-Portrait: Gabriel Orozco and the Artistic Mindset

Black Kites was made after Orozco experienced a major medical emergency. He decided he wanted to create a piece using a slow and solitary process and thus began the methodical procedure of covering a real human skull in a dense and shiny graphite grid, similar to a checkerboard. The work is a meditation on our own fate and mortality.

Yielding Stone is a ball made of plasticine—a soft and malleable material that never hardens. Orozco rolled the ball through the streets of New York where it picked up dirt and debris from the sidewalks. Through this action the ball was imprinted with a record of its movements, expressing the notion of a body in action. This ball is purposefully the same weight as Orozco, adding to this idea of the object illustrating a body in motion.

The Corplegados (roughly translates to mean "folded bodies") are an extension of Orozco's notebooks. They are life-size sheets of paper that Orozco would fold up and take with him when he traveled. On the paper, he would write, collage photos, paint, draw...sometimes the materials would seep through to the back of the paper, forming an unpredictable reflection of the front. Each is different in color and mood, and the contrasts reflect the various environments and psychological states he was in at their time of making.

My Hands Are My Heart is a terracotta sculpture bearing the impression of the artist's body. To create the sculpture, Orozco squeezed a ball of clay in the palms of his hands—the resulting shape resembled a heart. The photo reveals the process of its making and the artist is seen holding the sculpture close to his actual chest.