Rolling Life's Hand Line
Orozco makes ephemeral sculptures-sand on a table, a shoebox in snow, clay bearing the imprint of his hand-that are given longer life through photography. Whether recording one of his own interventions in the landscape or a found situation, his photographs remind us of the fleeting beauty to be found in simple things and chance occurrences if we only open our eyes and minds.
This image of a potato beetle curled in the palm of a hand is characteristic of the artist's photographic work: his subjects are frequently seen in close-up and centered in the frame, which also paradoxically subjects them to sometimes dizzying shifts in scale and perspective. Like his famous early sculpture Yielding Stone (1992)-a Plasticine ball shaped and marked by the artist rolling it in the street-Orozco's photographic subjects seem to exist somewhere between the organic and the handmade and, by extension, at the precise point where imagination and reality intersect.
This image of a potato beetle curled in the palm of a hand is characteristic of the artist's photographic work: his subjects are frequently seen in close-up and centered in the frame, which also paradoxically subjects them to sometimes dizzying shifts in scale and perspective. Like his famous early sculpture Yielding Stone (1992)-a Plasticine ball shaped and marked by the artist rolling it in the street-Orozco's photographic subjects seem to exist somewhere between the organic and the handmade and, by extension, at the precise point where imagination and reality intersect.
Artwork Details
- Title: Rolling Life's Hand Line
- Artist: Gabriel Orozco (Mexican, born Jalapa Enriquez, 1962)
- Date: 2003
- Medium: Chromogenic print
- Dimensions: Image: 12 1/2 × 18 9/16 in. (31.7 × 47.2 cm)
Sheet: 16 in. × 19 15/16 in. (40.6 × 50.7 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Anonymous Foundation and Charina Foundation Inc. Gifts, 2004
- Object Number: 2004.159
- Rights and Reproduction: © Gabriel Orozco
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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