Cemetery

Orozco makes ephemeral sculptures-sand on a table, a shoebox in snow, clay bearing the imprint of his hand-that are given longer life by way of photography. Whether recording one of his own interventions in the landscape or a found situation, his photographs remind one of the fleeting beauty to be found in simple things and chance occurrences if we will but open our eyes and minds.
The artist is peripatetic, rooted in the materials and cultural traditions of Mexico but finding inspiration, collaboration, and opportunity around the world. In recent years, he has become particularly interested in ceramics in part because the hand-thrown pot is common to all cultures; last year the artist traveled to Mali to explore the production, uses, and meaning of ceramics in that culture. His trip took him to the legendarily remote city of Timbuktu on the border of the Sahara, an ancient trading post that took gold from West Africa to Europe. Little has changed in Timbuktu over the centuries, except that the Sahara increasingly encroaches on the city. Orozco stumbled on an old but still active cemetery where he found particular resonance in the terra-cotta grave markers scattered in the landscape as though he himself had created a site-specific installation. With his characteristically unfailing eye for color and form, the artist finds a vantage point from which the spherical pots, placed at the head of graves as markers and as receptacles for food and water offerings, appear as part of the natural landscape.