Picture postcard: Gabriel Orozco’s new works at White Cube Hong Kong

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Gabriel
Hong Kong's White Cube gallery presents a new series of works from Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, the result of an 18-month residency in Tokyo. Pictured: installation view
(Image credit: Vincent Tsang, White Cube)

‘I get bored very, very easily,’ warns the globetrotting Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, whose latest series of works – inspired by his 18 month-long residency in Tokyo, Japan – is on show at White Cube Hong Kong.

The 80 watercolour paintings range from postcard- to poster-size and are produced on the simple gilt-edged card ubiquitous to Japanese stationery stores, which he covers with gold leaf before painting. 

The works feature Orozco’s trademark semi-abstract geometrical circles dissected with precise lines, along with an ethereal natural landscape quality that evokes the fluidity of sumi-e brushstrokes.

‘I see the gold surface like an empty space,’ he says. ‘I start with brush strokes to activate that perfect gold surface.’

The paintings are deliberately propped up on a narrow unvarnished timber shelf, that runs throughout the pristine white two-storey gallery space; to be experienced ‘more as objects reclining on the shelf’, the artist explains.

While best viewed as a complete collection, the standout piece of the exhibition is one of the smaller and more simple iterations, a sole leaf that the artist painted in a single brushstroke.

This eagle-eyed focus on space is his trademark. ‘Emptiness is my favourite subject,’ he says. ‘Here it was about what to leave empty like the spaces in a Zen garden.’

Fear of boredom keeps him moving to different countries, a process that helps him learn by continually trying new things, he says.

‘It’s very strange, though, because I tend to go to the same restaurant and order exactly the same things off the menu,’ he laughs. ‘But not with my work.’

Gabriel

The 80 watercolour paintings range from postcard- to poster-size and are produced on the simple gilt-edged card ubiquitous to Japanese stationery stores, which he covers with gold leaf before painting. Pictured left: Suisai I, 2016. Right: Suisai III, 2016

(Image credit: Vincent Tsang, White Cube)

Gabriel

The works feature Orozco’s trademark semi-abstract geometrical circles dissected with precise lines, along with an ethereal natural landscape quality that evokes the fluidity of sumi-e brushstrokes. Pictured left: Suisai V, 2016. Right: Suisai XII, 2016

(Image credit: Vincent Tsang, White Cube)

Gabriel

The paintings are deliberately propped up on a narrow unvarnished timber shelf that runs throughout the pristine white two-storey gallery space

(Image credit: Vincent Tsang, White Cube)

Gabriel

‘Emptiness is my favourite subject,’ Orozco says. ‘Here it was about what to leave empty like the spaces in a Zen garden.’ Pictured left: Suisai XX, 2016. Right: Suisai XIII, 2016

(Image credit: Vincent Tsang, White Cube)

INFORMATION

’Suisai: Tokyo Strokes’ is on view until 20 August. For more information, visit the White Cube Hong Kong website

Photography: Vincent Tsang, White Cube. Courtesy the artist

ADDRESS

White Cube Hong Kong
50 Connaught Road Central
Hong Kong

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Catherine Shaw

Catherine Shaw is a writer, editor and consultant specialising in architecture and design. She has written and contributed to over ten books, including award-winning monographs on art collector and designer Alan Chan, and on architect William Lim's Asian design philosophy. She has also authored books on architect André Fu, on Turkish interior designer Zeynep Fadıllıoğlu, and on Beijing-based OPEN Architecture's most significant cultural projects across China.