Asterisms Gabriel Orozco’s Commission for the Deutsche Guggenheim
Gabriel
Orozco collected thousands of objects to realize his project
“Asterisms.” These objects, retrieved from the shores of a natural
reserve in Mexico and a playing field in New York, form
the core of the 18th commissioned work for the Deutsche Guggenheim.
Orozco assembled them into complex installations that can be read both
as a criticism of civilization and a poetic topography.
Gabriel Orozco: Asterisms at Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin
Today, even the heavens are in precise order: the International Astronomical Union
(IAU) has defined the boundaries of the constellations according to
fixed coordinates in the sky. But then there are the “asterisms”—groups
of stars that are not defined by these scientific criteria but whose
connecting lines produce a noticeable image, for instance an object or
figure. Whether they are our historical zodiac signs, the Mayan
constellations, or ancient Chinese astronomy, they are all based on
asterisms. The pictures we see in the sky are always subjective
projections: different cultures recognize different images.Asterisms, the title of Gabriel Orozco’s installation at the Deutsche Guggenheim, gives expression to this human need to create order in the world and perceive meaning in the existing constellations.
Asterisms
was realized as the 18th of a series of commissioned works for the
Berlin exhibition hall. For the project, the artist, born in 1962 in
Mexico, collected thousands of objects that he found in two very
different locations: he removed countless tiny fragments such as bottle
caps and bits of plastic and chewing gum from the artificial grass of a
sports field near his apartment in New York; and on the coast of the
Baja California natural preserve in Mexico, he collected the garbage of
civilization that washes ashore even in this protected refuge, such as
plastic buoys, protective helmets, and glass bottles. Spread out in an
order on the floor, the flotsam, nearly 1,200 found pieces, forms a
monumental sea of objects. The installation, titled Sandstars,
is accompanied by twelve large-format photographs in which Orozco
photographed the objects in the studio arranged typologically according
to material, color, and size. Another photographic work shows the
landscape where the found objects washed ashore with random-seeming
objects from the beach ordered according to the same grid principle.
Astroturf Constellation,
the second work of the exhibition, also explores these kinds of
ordering patterns. Here, however, the objects have a completely
different scale: the work is comprised of miniscule bits of debris left
behind by athletes and spectators in the Astroturf of a playing field
on Pier 40 in New York. Orozco displays these myriad items—numbering
nearly 1,200—on a large platform. “It is very interesting to compare
the two works,” explains Joan Young, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the New York Guggenheim Museum, who curated the exhibition project together with Nancy Spector, in an interview with ArtMag. “Astroturf Constellation,
the New York work, is composed of these small fragments. Through the
photographs each of these objects is actually enlarged. So a shift of
scale takes place there. The reverse happens in the “Sandstars” piece,
where the photo reduces the object in size. The equalizing that occurs
through the medium of photography highlights the relationships between
the objects in both works. There is this shift between the macro and
the micro, between whole objects and fragments of objects.“ Asterisms
juxtaposes these two large installations that oscillate between the
macro and the micro planes. In the process, the exhibition project
invokes several of the artist’s recurring motifs: poetic encounters
with mundane materials, traces of erosion, and the ever-present tension
between nature and culture.
Gabriel Orozco: Asterisms 7/6 – 10/21/2012 Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
