Entrevista com/interview with Gabriel Orozco

fonte:http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/orozco/

Thinking with Clay
ART:21: How did you find the brick factory in France where you made
your clay pieces and why did you choose to work there?

OROZCO: I was interested in working in a brick factory more than a
ceramic workshop. I was interested in the clay used to make bricks.
Mortar la cota, kind of porous, and more massive. I am interested in
the weight of my hands in this clay and the manipulation of a certain
amount of clay in relation to my body against a table and two or three
spheres. So this combination of elements: geometric and organic.
Organic—my hands, my body; and geometric—the table or the spheres. And
mass, which became a mass in movement, eroded by these forces.
Normally when you do pottery you try to make a pot or something, but
you are very much aware of this empty center space. In this case I was
not so interested in the center, but a mass. That mass is compressed,
moved, extended, eroded by these forces. And for that reason I needed
a clay that was special.

The workshop in France has this. It used to be a brick factory before
and now it's a ceramic workshop. They have these machines to produce
the combination of clay that I need, very fast. You can almost have a
small industry or process. You can have this mechanically quantity of
clay and then my body can act mechanically. It was very important that
my body become a kind of organic machine of constant movement, doing
almost a mechanic movement with the clay—that constant. It was an
activity that needed some rhythm connected with the machine producing
the clay, bringing it to the table, and then myself doing it as a
constant. So in one day you can do a whole amount of hours, like a
worker doing a mechanical thing. And for me that was important. Not so
much one object, but more a kind of body machine doing this action
with the clay.

ART:21: Are you more interested in the activity of the making or in
the end result?

OROZCO: I don't separate the making and the final result. I don't
separate the two. I think the balance for me is very important, the
balance of the making of something. This making is part of the final
result, is part of the final end of the story. And that's why, again,
the body in action, the individual in action, in relation with the
social space, the social materials, and economics of these is very
important. At the end you have an object, an installation, an image,
that reflects that relationship between that individual, the social
materials, the social displays, and the connection between dialogue
and the negotiation between private space and public space in every
object. And so, that's why for me, the making of the work and the
political implications of the making—how you make things—is part of
the final result of the work. That's why, you know, I don't have a
studio. But if I need a factory for something, or a workshop in France
to produce this type of activity, I do it.

ART:21: What's the impetus for these pieces? You're thinking of
making some work, thinking of clay, and you have an idea of the
result, your goal?

OROZCO: First, I decide where I would like to be in terms of
geography. That's the first thing. It's like, well, okay, I want to be
by the ocean, or in the city, or in hot or cold weather, or I would
like to be in the countryside or in the city for that time. And then,
also, at the same time, I'm working on ideas. So I try to add my ideas
to this location wish.

In the case of France I wanted, first, to do this pottery project. I
wanted to use a turn, which I never did before, and do these
interventions with the pots in the turn circulating. And then I was
smashing it with things and then I was doing other fragmented pots. I
was interested in the pots. Then we found this workshop and the clay
that I needed was there. I choose a place because of the idea, but
also because I wanted to be there in France. If I really wanted to be
in Mexico, I will do it in Mexico, which will be probably a different
thing because of the different conditions of work in Mexico. At that
point I wanted to do it in Europe, and especially in France. So it's a
combination of location and the idea, and just finding that situation
all together to make the work. But the idea is very important.

ART:21: So, why pots? It seems so basic.

OROZCO: It's the space of the pots, lately. I guess I'm thinking a
lot about the pots as a space of transportation, conservation,
everyday life, circulation. And in my work the idea of all this is
very important. Conservation, transportation, and the idea of
roundness has to do with movement and transportation and circulation.
So my interest in the round or in the sphere and the circle has to do
with movement and with erosion and the tendency of bodies to be round
when they have to move, when they have to be exposed to contact with
reality. That's why I did the "Yielding Stone" which is a plastocene
stone that, when it's rolled, gets the shape and also all the dust.
The contact with reality makes the shape of the sculpture.

In this case the first idea was to make these pots in which the turn
and the circularity will make this void and this pot. Of course, they
are not exactly pots. They are like plates or they are just circular
platforms in which I act, I do, I intervene. And then I call them pots
because it's easy and it makes sense and it's pots. But you can also
see them as an abstract circular platform with movement and
interventions. Like planets, or like disks, or like many other things.
And that is a pot. A pot is a very complex instrument and we see
plenty in human history. And, so again, that can be related with
Mexico if you want, but I think it can be related with Greece and it
can be related with everybody in the world because pottery is just
part of history in general. And that's my interest in it.

ART:21: What are you examining when making each piece? How do you
know if it's done?

OROZCO: You get the brute industrial piece of clay, which is this
square bunch of clay with no shape but the shape from the machine,
then I start to act on it against the table with the spheres and with
my hands. And with this movement you start to get a dynamic sense of a
body and of this space that is taking some shape. The clay is a
recipient because it's receiving all these action and all these forces
as a mass.

When I feel that it should be ready is a quite subjective thing. But
it's that the shape should represent what just happened before. And
sometimes it doesn't because maybe I overdid it or maybe there were
parts that lost their memory in the mass. So when I finish to do this
action with the clay I just check around. I move, I walk around and I
see that every face and every part of the mass represents what really
happens with clarity and simplicity. And that when someone else is
going to walk around or is going to take it, they too can see what
really happened. And that's why sometimes it looks clear and then the
piece is finished. Sometimes I have to do it again. Sometimes I can
spend half an hour with one piece and sometimes the other work is just
in five seconds. But the criteria, more or less, is the work is
finished when it represents what really happens in the action of doing
it.

When an object has a logic on its own, it starts to talk of many other
things. It's not that it represents anything, but it represents its
own reason to exist, in a way, as a material—as clay, terra cotta, in
relation with bricks, in relation with construction, with pottery,
with many things, and the body. Then it's representing the movement
that makes the shape. And then it can talk and express other things,
suggest food, look like a fish, or something else. On its own it has a
finish and a reason that somehow justifies that it exists.

ART:21: For the viewer that sees the completed show of these clay
works, how are you thinking that the person will respond? Are you
interested in the response?

OROZCO: Sure. Yes. Art happens in that space between the spectator
and the work. It's that space in between that finalizes the work of
art. And in the case of the terra-cotta works, they are especially
artistic—on the one hand very artistic, on the other very hermetic.

But then they were also for me very mysterious. I was trying something
I never did before. When you are doing this you are doing it for
yourself, because you will be a spectator also. And when you finish
this that you are trying, you will also be in the position of the
spectator. And I don't like the word spectator, because a spectator is
a passive word, and I don't think the spectator should be considered
passive. It should be more like the activator or something like that.
So it's that person who is going to activate that work or the object
or the photograph in their brain and they're going to start to make it
work, make it happen, in terms of memory, emotions, and etcetera.

As an artist, when you do something that didn't exist before or that
you never saw before, you need to do it because you are going to later
on be the activator of that. I see it for the first time after I
finish, right there fresh. And sometimes it works and sometimes it
doesn't. It's a subjective thing. Sometimes I let it go even if it
doesn't work so much for me. I say, "Well, let's wait and see, just
take it out." In the case of the clay pieces I am quite easy with
them. I let them go. And I take it quite light in that sense. Just go
on, see what happens.

ART:21: What happens after you think a piece is ready?

OROZCO: After I feel it's ready when the action is enough in the
clay, then I just go for the next. And then this one goes out and has
to dry for two months, because there's quite a lot of water inside the
clay and it's massive and so it has to dry for a long time. And we
fire the clay with wood. The firing is also hazardous, because there
can be quite a lot of accidents and it can crack the piece and also
the color variation is uncontrollable. That is nice, too. It really
looks like a brick, the different tonalities. It's a very
straightforward process. Classic, simple. I'm not so interested in
colors and finishes. It's just a regular kind of brick production.

ART:21: When you installed the show in the gallery, what decisions
were you making?

OROZCO: In this case I decided to use market tables that are quite
common in Paris. They are wood panels with metal legs and they use
them in the markets outdoors. So there is the transportation—very
flexible, very easy to move. So I display these tables and on each
table I put one or two pieces. I think this was a nice connection
because some of the pieces look a little bit like food, or bread, or
fish, or a recipient of some kind of food. And then I thought it was
appropriate to have that reference to all these things in the market.
And in the case of the piece in Documenta, it was altogether a group
of forty variations of plates and pottery. And in this case they were
more like single pieces on tables.

ART:21: Were those allusions to food intentional, or did they just happen?

OROZCO: I think they just happened. I was not thinking so much when I
was doing the work that it has to look like bread, or it has to look
like a fish, or it has to look like anything. So when I was doing it
it was more subjective, just like doing it in the moment. It depends
also in the firing, with the color and the final shape. Some of them
came out the way they did because firing clay is a very similar
process to how they prepare bread or how they cook. It's similar—how I
manipulate these things and how people do food and prepare things. So
in the end it looks like that because the process of the movement of
the hand is quite common in many activities. So then you have this
shape. But it was not intentional in terms of imitating, it was just a
consequence of a common logical activity.

ART:21: Could you talk about the process of making things with your
hands versus a mental thinking process?

OROZCO: The thinking process has many levels and I try to explore how
it is related to the body in many different ways. To be static, to be
seated, to be walking, to be moving, to be looking at the ocean, in a
train. To be working with my hands in a drawing, like a concentrated
field, or in a more expanded field with objects in a situation, or
with the clay and very physical. This all generates a stimulus in the
brain and you are thinking. But the connection between the brain and
the body and the breathing and the sweating and the time that you
spend and how you slow down thinking or you accelerate thinking is
very important for me because you just generate the different aspects
of thinking. I am interested in all of them. I try to combine them
because I cannot just be thinking statically. And I cannot just be
writing. I like to move and I like to be more physical.

I think in the final result of the piece the thinking process should
be evident. It should be evident, the brain that did that work. Not
just the hands, not just the mold, not just the physical and technical
aspect of the making. It's much more important that the intellectual
aspect of the making of the work is evident in the final result of the
work. I think that is what is really going to generate the space of
communication when someone looks at something that makes thinking
happen in the receptor. The shape at the end has to do with provoking
the space for thinking.

That's why I'm not so much concerned in words in my work, because I
don't think I need words in the work to generate thinking. I think you
can do it through the objects if the objects have content and some
serious thinking involved. Then they are quite open to receive new
thinking from the visitor.

ART:21: Was there an underlying order or relationship to the
placement of clay works on the tables?

OROZCO: No, there wasn't a specific order. I wanted it so that you
can see each one separated as a single work. So you can walk around
and they are on the table. They were made on a table. So the height
and the space of the table is just the appropriate space and height
for the work, because it's how I was looking at it when I was
manipulating it. And the table is very important in my work in
general. I have these working tables and I work on a table. And for me
the table is this platform of action in which we do so many things.
That is very important in my work.

In the show I did try to make connections with the photographs that I
took in Mali in July. I did this trip to Mali for three weeks and I
took some photographs that are connected with the work. And they are
very different, but there are some connections like the cemetery of
Timbukutu which I found in the trip. I found this cemetery because I
was interested in the pottery and the ceramics. When I did this trip
to Mali in Africa the reason was to search for ceramics traditions, to
understand, to learn, to enjoy what they do because it's a great
tradition in Mali. And then I discovered this cementery in Timbuktu.

It's interesting how the work takes you to discover places that you
would never discover if it's not because you were doing this work. So
that connection between what you do and what you discover afterwards
is very interesting. In this aspect, in the show, you have these
tables with these ceramics on one side. And on the other, on the
walls, you have these photographs of Mali. There isn't a direct
connection. But there is something that is evidently the same person
who is interested in these things. And there are many reasons for
that.