
OROZCO ARIEL
CUBA [1979]
Known for using the city and its inhabitants as a context of his practice, Ariel Orozco is an artist who produces complex and challenging works of art with virtually nothing. Political and social by nature, his work largely consists of actions and interventions, which he methodically documents.
"I am interested in the public space as an extremely rich and complex zone, a human arena full of meanings and enigmas. I have tried to slightly alter places, orders and behaviors in order to affect meanings and significances, gestures and social mechanics that don't seem apparent or evident at simple sight; that's why I sometimes feel I play more the role of an archeologist who's in constant pursuit for the codes leading to an answer to conflicts of personal, political and social dimension. Many of the actions I do are the result of daily accidents and observations where I try to extract the essence of these events, sometimes the essence is not perceived or experienced immediately, and my goal at the exhibition space is for the withholder to spontaneously crack the codes leading (more towards a recognition than a discovery) at an intimate level. For me the everyday life is an enormous laboratory where we evaluate not only what happens in our lives and imagination but in the complex system of human interaction between individuals and their political and social context. Every object or documentation I have produced derives from an action or its notion, for me the resulting objects are a mere manifestation of my intervention, actions, sculptures, installations are sustained by a gesture which is the substance of my work."