Black Kites, 1997. � Gabriel Orozco. Courtesy Tate Modern.
When TJ and I arrived in Paris last October for our 20-hour Nuit Blanche art bender, we readied ourselves for the eve ahead with a can of coke and a cigarette. Sitting in the square outside the Pompidou, TJ noticed a camera on a tripod a few yards away. Obligingly, I went over to investigate. There were signs taped down in front of the camera instructing readers of said sign to pose for a self portrait. A camera remote sat nearby for just that purpose. We excitedly snapped a few too many silly poses before skipping off into the white night, but frustratingly, I never found out who the artist was or what the project was, or even whether the thing was an arts project at all.
On our way to Notre Dame, I remember we pressed our faces up against the glass walls of the Pompidou to reveal the secret of the shadows we could barely make out while walking past. In a large room, we saw a fan whizzing around with rolls of white toilet paper elegantly swooshing down like a rhythmic gymnast�s ribbon. We saw a Citro�n DS with the middle cut out, then smushed back together like an oreo cookie without any filling. We both recognised the car but, between the two of us, we couldn�t manage the artist�s name. When the press release for the Gabriel Orozco show at the Tate Modern went round, the images clicked and I realised whose work we�d seen through the Pompidou�s windows.
I want to like this show. But I don�t. It depresses me. It�s like going on a first date with someone whose photos you�ve only seen on Facebook. Online, he�s not half bad; a bit pretty, witty messages. But when you�re across the table at The Ambassador, his prettiness is nice enough and his chat�s alright but by the time the starters have been cleared away the conversation�s flagging and relatively pretty just isn�t good enough. It�s not that this show is offensive or tedious or really, truly horrible, but that it�s empty. Like my terrible blind date metaphor, it�s empty but trying to hint at meaning through tired clich�s.
Relativism�s such a pain in the ass. It�s done the art world little good. The nightmare that is post modernity resulted in an approach that says it doesn�t matter what�s �good� or �bad� because everyone�s opinion is equally valid. I�m open to being wrong, but this strikes me as a load of old hair-loss replacement bollocks. Sure, we don�t all have to agree on what�s �good� � there would hardly be a need for art if that were the case � but criticism by its very definition must assume that some works of art are more worthy than others. Contrary to relativistic dogma, it�s a critic�s job to make judgements, but the increasing power of institutions and PRs means that most �criticism� tends to be expressed as art history or back-slapping positivity. Not that either of those are intrinsically bad � I love a good bit of back-slapping positivity and I love being excited about things � but reading the newspapers, magazines, and even blogs, you�d think that every single art show was an absolute masterpiece.
I�m getting a little side tracked.
One of Orozco�s more visually striking pieces, Black Kites, is a human skull with a drawn on black and white geometric pattern. The skull is wonderful to look at, briefly, but it has no power as a work of art. It solicits no emotional response, no feeling; it�s like looking at a trinket in a curiosity shop. So you can understand why I�m not comfortable when critics and curators say things like: �the skull, an organic reality, engages with and parries the attempt of the artist to impose a system, a sense of regularity and order.� Why do people still write like this? What does �organic reality� even mean? Here the truism holds that clouded language denotes clouded thought: such a statement entirely neglects the fact that nature has its own set of systems and rules, its own order. A black and white pattern isn�t �reason� to the skull�s �uncertainty�.
I look at Black Kites and I see a skull with a pretty pattern on it. That�s it. Nothing more. It doesn�t make me think about life, art, death, desire; but what Dave Hickey calls 'scholastic post-minimalism - "fast art" designed for the institutional, white-box quick-take.'
With so many of Orozco�s works, the concept or process has been privileged � chopping the middle out of a Citro�n DS and putting it back together, tracking down matching yellow scooters to photograph them as a pair, filling a chess board with nothing but rooks, displaying an empty shoebox, taking photographs of the steam of breath on a piano, extracting amusing phrases from obituaries to write out on banners � to the detriment of the visual effect of the physical work.
There�s nothing here to look at. In effect this exhibition is a promenade piece: it�s contemporary art that�s the product of a society with no attention span. You can amble through the entire show without stopping to pause for a single sustained look. Hickey again perfectly encapsulates my desire for more than just food for thought: �I want an image that I can keep looking at, some kind of sustained eloquence, an image that perpetually exceeds my ability to describe it.�
This probably isn�t the place to get into a discussion about the importance of beauty, and I mean beauty as something that provokes a physical response, not simply as a box-ticking set of aesthetic guidelines, but art needs more than surface tricks to mean something, to move someone. It�s no good if you look at the work, aren�t moved, then read the explanatory text and feel more intrigued by the conceptual underpinnings of the work rather than the finished piece itself. This art has no power. Orozco�s pieces aren�t persuasive. They don�t demand my attention or evoke a physical response. Witty though much of his work may at first appear, to me it just isn�t interesting.
