foxes, dogs
and rats,
and
failing systems.
image, Mark Manders, 1992
foxes and rats
One thing that I’ve had to learn as an artist—considering how everything that I had learned about what art should be and what art was, and what an artist should be like (disciplined, following the love of the craft)—was that this didn’t work for me. Suddenly I had to take all of these notions apart, because they weren’t mine, they weren’t enough for me; they bored me and threw me into despair.
It was a system that really didn’t work for me.
Realizing this gave me a very different vision; I think it has repercussions in the way in which my pieces started to turn out, because I understood at last that my urgent struggle was to find something that was not art. In that sense, I’m not sure if people who consider themselves “educated” understand what art is; I think not.
photo by Gabriel Orozco
I saw that “educated” people as well as “ignorant” ones immediately viewed my work with disapproval: the yogurt lids, the balls of Play-Doh. With ignorant people, it’s obvious that you have to try to destroy their prejudices, but with educated people it’s the same thing, you also have to destroy their prejudices—and their judgment. In their case, it’s a prejudice regarding what they ask of and from art.
But as Borges said, we don’t know what art should be, and we don’t need to find out, either; what we seek is to understand the reason why art exists.
interview with
gabriel orozco here..
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