GLENN LOWRY: In 1994, Gabriel Orozco had an exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery. This was his first exhibition at a commercial gallery in New York and the expectations for the show were high.
Curator Ann Temkin.
ANN TEMKIN: Orozco was conscious that he did not want to do something that was [a] grand gesture, or elegant spectacle. He wanted to do something that would confuse people, and perhaps disappoint people.
He had had a yogurt lid on his wall in his apartment, for many months. And he was just looking at it and thinking about it from time to time, and when it came time for the exhibition he thought that if this had been so interesting to him, maybe it would be interesting to other people as well.
So the whole room was very much like this one. At first, apparently empty, like oops, they forgot to do the exhibition, and then if the person would look a little harder, they would find, in the middle of each wall, this silent yogurt lid defining the space, And it was an enormously powerful and eloquent gesture for something that was in fact very minimal in terms of actual craft, or effort on the
part of the artist.
Orozco likes to catch viewers off guard. And he likes to challenge himself. He knows he’s a good maker of things in terms of craft but that cannot be the point. And so, to make sure that that was not the point, he decided to have his first exhibition be about placing these yogurt lids on walls. And I think it’s safe to say that he succeeded.