For this exhibition, Orozco presents a new series of tempera paintings, and a selection of new watercolor collages which expand upon his Suisai series, begun in 2016. All of the works were completed during these trying times, as the tragic pandemic was underway, either in his apartment in Tokyo or via remote interaction.
The tempera paintings on view all began as spontaneous, quick, and fluid line drawings Orozco made in his notebooks. The notebooks play a key role in Orozco’s work, often replacing the studio as a daily site of experimentation and new ideas. Orozco selects from these little scribbles and blows them up to scale on the canvas. The color placement is a more methodical process and becomes an almost sculptural operation: carving the originating simple lines into shapes that have weight and form, and which sometimes resemble flowers, leaves, tree branches, or other elements of nature—a motif that runs through much of Orozco’s work, and certainly throughout this exhibition. In this series, he incorporates a very limited palette made up of colors he began to use more of after moving to Asia in 2015 and which stem from his study of Japanese painters and their influence on the work of Henri Matisse.
On view September 11 – October 24, 2020.