Purple Institute
[April 3 2015]
Read our interview with Gabriel Orozco in Purple Fashion #23 out now
OLIVIER ZAHM — Why did you escape from the traditionnal work in a studio?
GABRIEL OROZCO — I didn’t want to be in a studio, painting. It was existential, a necessity. It’s not so much that you adapt to the time, but the time gets adapted to you. You start to circulate in the world, and the world starts to circulate in you. Then you’re part of the wave, like surfing; looking at the waves, and you need to reach one. Which one is the right wave for you to catch? That moment for me was in Spain. After that, around ’86 or ’87, I came home to Mexico. And in Mexico, my work was really different from Mexican art. In ’87, I started to work in the streets. I was very alone there. Then photography became very important because many of my friends were photographers. I didn’t have a camera; I borrowed them. Then snap cameras came out, a hundred dollars. It became cheaper.
OLIVIER ZAHM — Pocket cameras changed your life.
GABRIEL OROZCO — Completely. I could go to dangerous areas in Mexico City and take photos. I could travel.
OLIVIER ZAHM — Were you working alone or alongside friends?
GABRIEL OROZCO — A group of artists who were younger than me became interested in what I was doing, and they started coming to my house. We made a workshop, starting in ’87. We made a kind of school. Not so much a collective because they were younger, still developing, not ready; so we studied art, in my house, for five years.
ALEXIS DAHAN — Did they look up to you?
GABRIEL OROZCO — Yes. They wanted to learn from me. They wanted to know what I knew. They wanted to sneak into my books. They wanted to get some beer. They were very charming.
OLIVIER ZAHM — You created a sort of alternative school?
GABRIEL OROZCO — Yes, by accident I became a teacher very early because they asked me to do it. They came on Fridays. Some days they’d arrive at 10 in the morning and spend the whole day with me, and other times friends came in the afternoon.
