23.01.–07.03.1999

The work of Gabriel Orozco (b. 1962 in Veracruz), who lives in Mexico City and New York, comprises sculptural works, installations, and works of photography, which he often develops as picture series. Orozco relates to real objects which he frequently modifies, however, or whose contexts he alters. They thus receive a new meaning; the everyday object turns into a special, aestheticized, or strange object. "Orozco's work presents a reality that puts reality into doubt", says Jean Fisher in an essay on Orozco's work "Empty Club", in which the artist offered the viewer an oval billiard-table to play on.

Orozco utilises subtle means. His works evoke indistinct, imaginative memories or create a lyrical world.

For Portikus, Orozco has collected sand and flotsam along the beach of the Chacahua Sea in Zapotalitos, Oax., in his native country Mexico, out of which he creates an installation. Elements of a summary "nature idyll" thus is transferred to the wintry big city of Frankfurt. Materials found in the open landscape are transposed in the exhibition hall at Portikus to a different, no longer clearly determinable reality based on experience.

The flotsam also consists of rusty cans and tin, as well as remnants of a piece of furniture. These remains of civilisation introduce the aspect of time and simultaneously create a morbid, maybe even painfully yearning atmosphere.

As always, art and life appear as inseparable realms in the artist's work, which makes a universal claim in a multitude of ways using little things.