Gabriel Orozco | Horses Running Endlessly

Gabriel Orozco 

Horses Running Endlessly 

Self-published, 1995

2 x 88 x 88 cm.

Edition of 3 [+1 AP]

"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."

- MoMA

"Rather than reasonably conceivable variant of the traditional chess game, Gabriel Orozco’s Horses Running Endlessly, 1995, calls to mind something resembling Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie remade by a hallucinating Bobby Fischer. Crowding onto this large four-color chessboard with 256 squares—instead of the usual 64—a throng of knights (also in four colors rather than two) mobilize, the pieces distributed in an order governed only by the principle that the color of the square must correspond to the color of the knight. The configuration of the pieces is rich in potential transformations. On a conventional chessboard, the knight can successively occupy all the squares without ever passing through the same one twice. I do not know whether this possibility exists on Orozco’s oversized version, but I imagine nevertheless the simultaneous setting in motion of the pieces and the quasi-infinite potential configurations. Moreover, each viewer is free to modify the given configuration as he or she wishes (at least according to the allowable moves of the knight). Like a Calder mobile one could activate with a fingertip or merely a breath, Horses Running Endlessly is a machine to produce diversity."

- Artforum

Jonathan Monk & Ariel Schlesinger

Jonathan Monk & Ariel Schlesinger
Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present A Semblance of A Whole (twice G.O.)
Mexico City, Mexico: Sala de Arte Público Siqeuiros, 2017
28 x 44 cm.
Edition size unknown

A double-sided take-away poster from a project we stumbled upon in Mexico last month by Jonathan Monk and Ariel Schlesinger (whose solo exhibition included a great work involving bubble makers and fire).


"For this, their fifth collaboration, artists Jonathan Monk (United Kingdom, 1969) and Ariel Schlesinger (Israel, 1980) present the piece Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present A Semblance of A Whole (twice G.O.) at the Façade Project of the Sala de Arte Público Siqeuiros. For this occasion, the artists have chosen to recapture a moment of contemporary art history where two art centers, Berlin (where Monk lives) and México City (where Schlesinger lives), converged through an early and iconic piece by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco. Made in 1995, when Orozco was in the DAAD artistic residency in Berlin, Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe consisted of a poetic act of urban coincidences where the Mexican artist parked his yellow Schwalbe motorcycle besides every other identical motorcycle he encountered during his quotidian trips within the city. He then photographed the two doubles one beside the other, an act that resulted in a series of forty photographs and an exhibition. For the installation at the Façade Project, Monk and Schlesinger retake this episode created by Orozco in Berlin by staging a site-specific version created for the Mexican present day context, a remake of the original. In their version Monk and Schlesinger have parked a yellow Schwalbe in front of a mirror, eliminating the physical double (and the act of searching and finding) with a reflection. The title the artists have given to their collaboration is a direct appropriation of a text piece of American artist Lawrence Weiner, thus making by this a mashup, a collage, of two different previous artworks.

Based on the premise that in art it is almost impossible to be original, or that in any case it would be futile to have originality as a goal, Monk has appropriated, reconsidered, altered or produced sequels of works from artists like Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler, Ed Ruscha, Sol LeWitt, and Jeff Koons among others. As if it was a cover, a reinterpretation of a song by another band, Monk changes some details of the original pieces adapting them to present times and spaces and makes his subjectivity explicit as the new interpreter. Schlesinger sees these new versions of other artists’ works as conversations from which he retakes previously discussed ideas and expresses them differently or develops them further."

- Curator Michele Fiedler

Gabriel Orozco | The Thing Quarterly

Gabriel Orozco
Issue #26
Silkscreened, laser-etched aircraft grade birch
San Francisco, USA: The Thing Quarterly, 2015

Edition of 1000

The current cycle of The Thing Quarterly issues are by Gabriel Orozco, Michelle Grabner (Summer), Jason Fulford & Tamara Shopsin (Fall), and Ricky Swallow (Winter, 2016). Orozco’s “Black Feather” boomerang comes in a custom-made box with a fold-out poster.



ALEXIS DAHAN — When and how did you start practicing the boomerang?

GABRIEL OROZCO — I guess about six years ago. I was spending summers in Burgundy, in France, buying kites for my son to fly. One shop sold boomerangs, which looked quite good, not like fake, touristy things that don’t work. I bought a couple and I spent a whole summer trying to fly them. After that I became passionate about boomerangs. Now it’s somehow my favorite sport. I have many different ones now.


ALEXIS DAHAN — How is a boomerang made? And could it be called a non-industrial object?

GABRIEL OROZCO — Boomerangs are non-industrial because of the limited demand. It’s a difficult sport. It’s not easy to throw. A lot of people are quickly disappointed because it’s so hard to throw, and then it doesn’t come back, and then you lose it and don’t want to hear about it again. First you need a very big field to learn to throw one. It goes very far and many fly away. That combination makes it unpopular. And then there are many shapes and many different boomerangs made of different materials. The original boomerangs were made of wood, but even in wood there many different techniques for making one, from one piece, laminated, or strip laminated, which bends the wood in layers. They’re also made of carbon and all kinds of plastics. They need a very precise design and it has to be cut and polished by hand. So it’s not industrial and the market is very small. Very few people in the world throw boomerangs. You have championships, world cups, and all that — I’ve met these people — but it’s a completely amateur sport. No one lives from boomeranging. They have jobs and most are engineers or mechanics or artists or scientists. I fly boomerangs at an airstrip. They fly planes; I fly boomerangs. Everybody flies something.




Read the full interview, here.

Purchase Issue #26, for $85.00 US, here.

Gabriel Orozco | The Thing

The Thing Quarterly just announced that Gabriel Orozco has joined as the newest contributor to their upcoming subscription cycle. He will produce issue 26, which will be released in the winter of 2015. Before him: David Korty next month, followed by Kate & Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte, then Brian Roettinger.

This Friday, The Thing hosts No Age, who will turn the venue into both a performance space and recording studio.

For more information, or to subscribe, visit www.thethingquarterly.com.

Gabriel Orozco | From Green Glass to Airplane

Gabriel Orozco
From Green Glass to Airplane
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Artimo & Stedelijk Museum, 2001
544 pp., 7.5 x 9.5", softcover
Edition of 3000. 


In the fall of 1997, Orozco shot five films as part of a project for Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum (November 1st to December 14th, 1997). From Green Glass to Airplane is a collection of stills from the films, and also features a text by curator Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen.

More chess sets

Various other chess works, some unique:












Horses Running Endlessly (1995) by Gabriel Orozco.
GDS: Drawing of a Chess Set (2002) by Kelly Mark
Kitchen Chess (2003) by Paul McCarthy
Pumpkin Chess Set (2003) by Yayoi Kusama
Chess Set (2003) by Tracey Emin
Modern Chess Set (2005) by Rachel Whiteread