MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – There was no formal opening or personal interaction with fans. Instead, Gabriel Orozco, the Mexican artist with a continents-spanning perspective, promoted his new collage watercolors with a dramatic, screen-friendly teaser.
Mexican artist, Gabriel Orozco, gestures during an interview with Reuters in Mexico City, Mexico October 3, 2020. Picture taken October 3, 2020.REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Orozco created the several dozen works while in quarantine in Japan earlier this year, but he oversaw their installation at a top-tier Manhattan gallery the way millions now work: virtually.
In a first for Orozco, the collection – containing the watercolors, as well as larger abstract paintings created mostly in Mexico – debuted last month without a glitzy public opening.
There was no chance for admirers or critics alike to interact with the artist, renowned for transforming ordinary items into poetic flourishes since the early 1990s.
So, his new paintings were publicized with a slick, video teaser set to dramatic music. youtu.be/PyD1-WWyJ6A
Forced to rely more than ever on tools like Zoom and Skype across a range of current projects, the son of a leftist Mexican muralist says he sees an evolving transformation of creativity born from the upheaval of global pandemic.
“There is the opportunity, probably, of a new generation to emerge, a new way of working to emerge, an alternative way of living for everybody to be reconsidered,” he said, sitting just off the lush courtyard of his Mexico City home.
An hour earlier, squatting down with pencil in hand, he discussed finishing touches to block sculptures he calls dice with his collaborator, Mexican stonemason Juan Fraga, who he had met face-to-face for the first time in months.
Before the pandemic, the two would meet every couple of weeks to refine the layers of whimsical geometric designs carved into the blocks.
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Orozco said his art, spread generously over sculpture, canvases, human and animal bones, minimalist installations, and more, took a mild hit from restrictions on travel and personal contact.
“Like many people, I start to suffer this kind of psychological effect of being in the screen all the time,” he said, calling it “very distracting.”
More generally, Orozco expects more changes emerging from the pandemic’s disruptions, even if its ultimate impact on creativity and inspiration is not yet clear.
ROLL OF THE DICE
Orozco, 58, sees the same changes that are upending how people work – less face-to-face contact and more screen time – also making their mark on the museums and commercial art galleries he knows well.
“In this new art world, there’s going to be more and more of a dependence on the distribution of works with digital media, and so the gallery, all the galleries, are making much more of an effort,” he said.
At the same time, his latest work appears to have taken on a more introspective turn. He noted that for his new watercolors he allowed himself an indulgence he does not usually seek.
“Psychologically (the paintings) were interesting because they became a very, I call them a little neurotic, passionate, almost therapeutic, which is something I don’t like to do in art,” he said.
Orozco argues that the social isolation and anxiety felt by many over the past few months is already changing how we create and communicate.
“The pandemic is a moment of a crash of activity that accelerates the crisis that was coming from before,” he said, a few hours before he was set to fly back to Japan.
The artist, who has also spent extended stints in London, Paris, and Bali, said less travel had been something of a relief.
“That was okay in a way because it was not so bad to slow down,” said Orozco, who studied art in Mexico in the 1980s before leaving for Spain, Brazil and the United States.
Last year, Orozco was tapped by Mexico’s president to oversee a more than $400 million revamp and expansion of Mexico City’s Bosque de Chapultepec, a project he says will focus on the sprawling urban park’s ecological restoration and social interconnectedness.
Surrounded by maps rolled out on tables and three-dimensional models of the park, he said he expects to finish the master plan by December, but has otherwise pushed off all other projects until 2022.
And he offered a related pandemic coping mechanism.
“I don’t plan too much ahead.”
Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Rosalba O’Brien
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
