Untitled from Polvo Impreso (Lint Book)
Gabriel Orozco’s work evokes everyday events and scenes, turning banal, often fragile objects and quotidian experiences into poetic meditations. Using a variety of mediums, humble materials, and minimalist constructions, his works memorialize the ephemeral, capturing fleeting and unexpected moments of beauty. For Polvo Impresso (Lint Book), Orozco assembled collections of dryer lint. He then created intaglio prints that reflected the material's properties, thus, in the artist's words, "imprinting dust in time."
Orozco has described his work as "centered on mobility and portability, on things that are in circulation…I had used dryer lint in my work before. Lint is made up of so many materials: fabric fibers mixed with hair, fingernails, and all the other particles our bodies expel. This ends up on our clothing and accumulates when we dry our laundry. We selected a few sheets of lint and pressed them against the plates Jacob [Samuel, the printer and publisher of the works] had prepared with soft ground, and then we put the prints in acid. It was a chance operation, as each sheet of lint is unique. The results were images that could be anything: accumulated dust, a sand landscape, or perhaps an organic form. And that is the beauty of this process—that you can perform the same actions each time, and the prints will always come out differently."
Orozco has described his work as "centered on mobility and portability, on things that are in circulation…I had used dryer lint in my work before. Lint is made up of so many materials: fabric fibers mixed with hair, fingernails, and all the other particles our bodies expel. This ends up on our clothing and accumulates when we dry our laundry. We selected a few sheets of lint and pressed them against the plates Jacob [Samuel, the printer and publisher of the works] had prepared with soft ground, and then we put the prints in acid. It was a chance operation, as each sheet of lint is unique. The results were images that could be anything: accumulated dust, a sand landscape, or perhaps an organic form. And that is the beauty of this process—that you can perform the same actions each time, and the prints will always come out differently."
Artwork Details
- Title: Untitled from Polvo Impreso (Lint Book)
- Artist: Gabriel Orozco (Mexican, born Jalapa Enriquez, 1962)
- Printer: Edition Jacob Samuel
- Publisher: Edition Jacob Samuel
- Date: 2002
- Medium: Etching with chine collé
- Dimensions: Plate: 7 5/8 × 6 1/2 in. (19.4 × 16.5 cm)
Sheet: 16 15/16 × 14 3/4 in. (43 × 37.5 cm) - Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: GIft of Jacob and Yael Samuel, 2025
- Object Number: 2025.272.2
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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Gabriel Orozco
1993, printed 2000
Gabriel Orozco
1993
Gabriel Orozco
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Gabriel Orozco
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Gabriel Orozco
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