ART CITIES:London-Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco’s diverse practice, which includes sculpture, photography, painting and video, explores philosophical conundrums through random encounters and spatial relationships. Using everyday objects in the contemporary urban environment, Orozco makes visible the poetry of chance connections, whimsy and paradox. He works with found materials or situations – a ball of clay, a deflated football, or an abandoned kite, for example – that are altered and then photographed to create surprising, often humorous scenarios from their simple, quotidian means.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: White Cube Gallery Archive

Bringing together approximately 200 new and existing works spanning sculpture, painting, photography, assemblage, and works on paper, Gabriel Orozco’s exhibition “Chronotopic” presents itself not as a static retrospective, but as an expansive travelogue through time and space. Drawing on the Mexican artist’s enduring fascination with play, games, sci-fi tropes, and archaeological investigation, the survey navigates distinct temporal and spatial zones to reveal the underlying formal logic that binds his astonishingly diverse universe of objects.

In Orozco’s hands, the small, quiet rhythms of daily life collide with the vast mechanics of planetary systems. Disposable, ephemeral items like tissue paper and toilet paper sit alongside materials burdened with historical weight, such as tempera and gold leaf. Rather than striving for grand epic gestures or transcendental ideals, Orozco deflates the myth of “Capital-A Art.” If his practice has long gazed toward outer space and ancient origins, it does so in the spirit of a game rather than a sermon—subverting the solemnity of the museum with curiosity, accident, and subversion.
Following a trajectory crossing three continents, “Chronotopic” underscores how artworks—and the ideas that generate them—are inherently mobile, constantly adapting and transforming as they move through shifting cultural contexts. Central to this journey are seminal sculptures alongside major works making their UK debut, including “The Weight of the Sun” (2003), “Visible Labor” (2015), and “Lluvia de Aplausos’ (2025).

Standing as a anchor to this timeline is “La DS (Cornaline)” (2013), an iteration echoing his iconic 1993 work “La DS”. For the original piece, Orozco famously sliced a classic Citroën DS automobile lengthways into thirds, removed the central section, and rejoined the outer flanks. The resulting altered vehicle—narrow, aerodynamic, and stripped of its functional interior—resembles an alien spacecraft or an archaeological artifact from a forgotten future, magnifying the car’s famous streamlined silhouette while rendering it deliciously useless.

Throughout the exhibition, geometry acts as a bridge between structural rigor and organic chance. In “The Atomists”, a series of sports photographs clipped from newspapers, Orozco overlays vibrant ellipses and spheres, mapping kinetic movement through abstract form. In his paintings, this logic extends into structural phenomenology: composition and color sequencing operate according to the rules and movement of a game of chess, transforming the canvas into a dynamic grid of tactical possibilities.

For Orozco, the recurring motif of the circle is never a decorative, static shape, but an active device—a temporal and spatial tool designed to open the artwork to the messiness of reality. This elasticity is most dramatically demonstrated in Dark Wave, a full-scale replica of a 14-meter whale skeleton. Across its vast, bony surface, Orozco traced graphite circles and pulse points, mapping the physical topography of the mammal like a celestial chart or a biological clock.

Viewed through this chronotopic lens, time ceases to be a linear progression marching inexorably forward. Instead, Orozco favors cyclical models that loop backward and forward across human history, disrupting standard modes of timekeeping much like memory or speculative science fiction.

“Chronotopic” leaves viewers with a set of lingering, provocative questions rather than neat conclusions. How does time enter the physical fabric of an object? Can an artwork function as a vehicle for temporal travel? And why remain invested in the illusion that art should be “timeless,” when its true power lies in being radically, exquisitely full of time?

Photo: Gabriel Orozco, Terracotta,  2026, Tissue paper on terracotta, 7 x 20 x 21.5 cm | 2 3/4 x 7 3/4 x 8 1/2 in., © Gabriel Orozco, Courtesy the artist and White Cube Gallery

Info: Curator: Briony Fer, White Cube Gallery, 144–152 Bermondsey Street, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 16/9-8/11/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, www.whitecube.com/