courtesy Marion Goodman Gallery, New York
urbanism | horizontality by eduardo aquino
the soft surface of the city
the marks and the debris of the city. Horizontality is also precisely delineated in a group of works that use the table as a surface for re-signification: Oval Billiard Table , 1996, which redirects the ball in play against the wishes of the player; Ping-Pong , 1998, where table extensions allow a game for four players that include a pond with plants in the middle; Horses Running Endlessly , 1995, is a chessboard where only knights are used. Orozco uses the apparatus of horizontality as a formal sculptural strategy, which also activates an interaction between the work and the visitor, producing an experience, creating a direct reference to the body and everyday life. In an urban reading, verticality could be the buildings and infrastructures; horizontality could be the expanses of open and public spaces like parks or plazas, spaces for gathering, exchange and pleasure. What happens when the paradigm of verticality is challenged? —
Sand on table , 1992, above, is a sculpture by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco. A table is placed on the soft sandy surface of what appears to be a beach. Sand is deposited on its surface to the point of maximum gravitational resistance creating a spontaneous pyramid. What defines the pyramidal shape of the sand is exactly the compressive strength between its grains, forcing, by gravity, the rest of the sand off the table. Counterpointing the modernist paradigm of ‘monumentality through verticality’ as in the work of Richard Serra, Orozco elects horizontality as an element of engagement within his work. Orozco’s horizontality is a semantic strategy to rethink sculptural procedure: horizontality is found, discovered and reactivated: Extensions of Reflection, 1992 – circular marks made by bicycle tires run through puddles on the street; Piedra , 1992 – a ball of clay equal in weight to the artist’s own body weight is rolled through the streets collecting
A preference for a horizontal surface – one that is activated, soft, ephemeral and engaging, takes us to the beach , specifically, an urban beach. Orozco’s work allows us to look at the beach not simply as a public space or an urban expansion but as a flexible infrastructure that provides a complex matrix of possibilities for the sustenance, growth and pleasure of city living. The urban beach turns urban boredom into eroticism, an oasis of pleasure. The beach, within the logic of production of the contemporary city, can be translated into design strategies that expand the limitations of urban spatial planning. This fluid and experimental territory of pleasure can turn the eye to more marginal areas of production which often escape the perceptions of neoliberal regulation. Regardless of the urban setting or the culture system, the beach is an outlet for imagination and experimentation.
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