Asterisms - Gabriel Orozco

Artforum - 11.10.12

Gabriel Orozco, Astroturf Constellation (detail), 2012, 1,188 found objects, including plastic, glass, paper, metal, and other materials, and thirteen photographic grids, framed,
each comprising 99 chromogenic prints. Found objects: overall dimensions vary with installation; photographs: each print 4 x 6, each grid 48 1/2 x 58 x 2.

Gabriel Orozcos Asterisms, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, presents two recent bodies of work that encapsulate several
recurring ideas in his output: erosion, everyday materials, and a friction between the natural environment and society. Throughout, the
exhibition emphasizes Orozcos delicate observation of how we construct private and individual systems of categorization. The show
runs through January 13, 2013.

IN 2008, I went to the Isla Arena in the bay of Guerrero Negro, Mexico, to collect whale skeletons for the National Library in Mexico. Its
an island, a national park, and a protected areaa sanctuary for all the whales that travel down to Baja from way up north. Theres a
lagoon where they can swim in calm water and do their mating and procreating. But there is also a lot of death. Isla Arena has a sand
bank, which is also a cemeterya twenty-five-mile-long beach. Its all sand, not even one palm tree. So you have all these animals
landing on the shore from the currents there. But I also saw lot of interesting artifacts and remains washing up. Its not a pool of pollution
or anything like thatbecause its protected, there arent people collecting stuff or exploring. I wondered if there might be some very
interesting, old, and untouched things coming ashore. These currents come from all overChina, Japan, Alaskaand they somehow
manage to cross the Pacific.

We asked permission to collect this debris. We spent a week on-site, and had to hire two boats, three motorcycles, two trolleys, and a
team of six people. We mapped the island out, divided it up, and did a kind of exploration, almost like an archaeological dig. After that,
the trolleys were transported to Pennsylvania, because I have a studio there and a big barn. I catalogued all of the objects we found,
making grids and photographs of them, in the barn.

Around the same time, I was working on a project for Pier 40 in Manhattan, which is the field where I play soccer with my team. At some
point, I also started to throw my boomerangs there, usually when its empty at lunchtime or very early in the morning. Being alone in the
field, searching for my boomerangs, I noticed all these little objects in the Astroturf, and I collected one or two because I found them
interesting. I took them to my house and made macrophotographs of them. I decided to assemble a big collection of all the objects that I
found on Pier 40pieces of clothing or buttons or cleats, or other sports-related stuff. The Astroturf is a big carpet.

There are resonances between these two projects, and I found that using photography and setting up a grid seemed the best way to
capture their echoes. The grid is useful in terms of quantifying accumulation. But as you know, you can cluster the world in so many
ways. I decided to do so taxonomically, just to have this platform with all the objects on display grouped first by type then by color then
by size. Obviously the idea of the boomerang as a cycle, as an elliptical and circular shape, is important to me, too. Circularity,
movement, dynamics, symmetry, asymmetry, and awareness of the wind, landscape conditions: Its all there in my work.

As for asterisms, I landed on this word after thinking about the grid and the constellation. When you put together a group of objects,
regardless of their origin, you form a constellation: a group of associations that somehow belong to you. On the other hand, the
landscape is always there. And when you start to look carefully, you begin to see all these little particles or encounters in the sand or
turf. They become a little bit like stars. You start to see one star, and then another, and then you start to look for these stars and try to
read the sky or the landscape. You make a grid in your mind in relation to the sky; that is your asterism. I think also its a technical term
in astronomy, but its a good name for the way these objects are found, displayed, and how they relate to one another, across the two
projects.

These are the asterisms I made from two recent explorations: one from a place a few blocks from my house, and the other one from a
very remote area, very far away. But you can find asterisms everywhere. Right?

As told to Arthur Ou
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