This sculpture, from a series of works by Orozco that reinterpret games, appears at first to be a chessboard—a simple, everyday, readymade object, in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp. However, closer examination reveals a logic that subverts the conventional game. Orozco's chessboard is made of four colors instead of the standard two, and the traditional eight-by-eight board has been reconfigured to be sixteen by sixteen, with 256 squares. Instead of including the usual thirty-two pieces (kings, queens, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns), Orozco has made all the players knights. In this game knights can play on indefinitely, turning through space infinitely, unchecked by other players.
Orozco orchestrates space and movement by changing the logic of a rational, rule-bound game. With a poetic sensibility, he creates a visual paradox, an endless imaginary trajectory of space and a compelling vision of time without end. This theme of perceptual discovery recurs in Orozco's diverse oeuvre, which includes sculpture, installation, photo-graphy, painting, and drawing.
Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, p. 144.
