Gabriel Orozco, Before the waiting dog, 1993

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En un registro extrañamente cercano a la obra de Aguilar Ruvalcaba a pesar de los 23 años que separan su creación, pero sin duda con igual medida de humor, encontramos una pieza de 1993 de Gabriel Orozco, “Before the waiting dog”. Compuesta por cinco fotografías, una escultura en cartón que contiene un cassette VHS, y dentro del cassette, un video en el que se ve a un perro esperando frente a un ventanal. Al video, ya atípico en la obra de Orozco, se le agregan otras piezas en distintos formatos para conformar una suerte de matrushka estética, constelación de objetos/ estrategias a los que el artista ha regresado una y otra vez: el contenedor, el supermercado, la palabra que “etiqueta” y encierra, el desplazamiento de esa etiqueta para virar su sentido. Si tomamos las fotografías como punto de partida, el recorrido empieza con la visita del artista a uno o varios supermercados ingleses, de la cual nos muestra cinco momentos en los que juxtapone productos para producir imágenes y con algunas de ellas, juegos de palabras en español: sobre una caja de melones una lata con fórmula para bebés que da lugar a “Niño con melones”; una bolsa de arena para gatos en medio de la sección de algodón del supermercado: “Gato en algodones”. Las fotografías, contenedores de instantes, nos muestran a su vez objetos que encierran y engloban: latas, bolsas, cajas, las frutas mismas. Al pie de las fotos, encontramos lo que fue una caja de cereal intervenida, desmantelada, reducida en tamaño, y rearmada por el artista. Lo que era un frente marcado por la distintiva K de Kellogs, se ha desplazado a la derecha para crear una imagen ilegible, como si el lenguaje hubiera sido reorganizado, dislocando a la vez nuestras expectativas hacia la función material y comunicativa del objeto. En su interior, una grabación que nos reta una vez más a desplazar el límite de la obra, su supuesto final, o ¿será su comienzo?

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Despite the 23 years separating Aguilar Ruvalcaba’s work from Gabriel Orozco’s, certain aesthetics and sense of humour joins them together. “Before the waiting dog” is a work of 1993 composed of five photographs, a cardboard sculpture containing a VHS cassette, inside of which we find a recording of a dog seen waiting in front of a large window. To the video, already atypical in Orozco's work, other pieces in different formats are added to form a kind of aesthetic matrushka, a constellation of objects / strategies to which the artist has returned time and time again: the container, the supermarket, the word that “labels” and encloses, the displacement of that label to change its meaning. If we take the photographs as a starting point, the tour begins with the artist's visit to one or several English supermarkets, which shows us five moments in which the artist juxtaposed products to produce images and, with some of them, puns in Spanish: on top of melons, a can with baby formula: “Child with melons” (Niño con melones); a cat litter bag in the middle of the cotton section of the supermarket: “Cat in cottons” (Gato en algodones). The photographs –containers of instants–, show in turn objects that enclose and encompass: cans, bags, boxes, the fruits themselves. At the bottom of the photos, we find an intervened cereal box, dismantled, reduced in size, and reassembled by the artist. What was a front marked by Kellogs' distinctive “K”, has shifted to the right to create an unreadable image, as if the language had been rearranged, while simultaneously dislocating our expectations towards the material and communicative function of the object. Inside the box, a recording that challenges us once again to reconsider the limits of the work of art, or was it its beginning?

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“Gabriel Orozco is the son of one of the last muralists, Mario Orozco Rivera, and was brought up in an environment profoundly marked by the artistic debates of the 1970s; he was close to Graciela Iturbide and Pedro Meyer, among others. After studying in the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, he returned to Mexico. From 1987 to 1990, he began to formulate a dissident approach to art that drew upon numerous anti-art strategies, from Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades to Joseph Beuys’s concept of “expansion.” Through his Taller de los viernes, or Friday workshop, Orozco had a notable in uence on the artists who would later found Temístocles 44, marked by the irruption of philosophical theory into artistic practice. Orozco participated in several group shows in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but he maintained a low pro le, since his proposals–like abrading bricks during a walk through a vacant lot, leaving traces of red powder (Ladrillos frotados [Rubbed Bricks], 1991); or arranging abandoned oranges on the stands in an open air market (Turista Maluco [Crazy Tourist], 1991); or inserting stones found while walking in his Tlapan neighborhood into a metal fence (Piedras en la reja [Stones in the Fence], 1989)–did not really t within the institutional structures of the time, mainly because they questioned the artistic support itself. In the summer of 1990, Orozco moved to New York City, months before participating in “America, Bride of the Sun,” an exhibition curated by Catherine de Zeghers for a museum in Antwerp. Divorced from its Mexican background, Orozco’s work changed substantially, with a newly radicalized return to a visual poetics that rejected the pictographic modes that remained operative in Mexico. Home Run, a controversial installation in which the artist placed oranges on the windowsills of an apartment building facing MoMA’s garden, and that were barely visible from the stairs and windows of the museum, was a sort of manifesto questioning the function of the museum and the intentionality of the work of art. Even more radical, the Empty Shoebox that Orozco exhibited in Aperto at the 1993 Venice Biennale, was part of a strategy that sought to dismantle the concept of art, substituting it with a personal poetics of perception (What is this doing here, if I’ve come to see sublime works?). Much debated in the Mexico City art world, the career and work of Gabriel Orozco inspired many younger artists.”

Debroise, Olivier, and Universidad Nacional Autónoma De México. Museo Universitario De Ciencias Y Arte. La Era De La Discrepancia : Arte y Cultura Visual En México, 1968-1997 / Con Textos De Olivier Debroise ... [et Al.] ; Editado Por Olivier Debroise ; [traducción, Joëlle Rorive Y Ricardo Vinós, James Oles] = The Age of Discrepancies : [art and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1968-1997] /. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma De México, 2007. Page 411.