Gabriel Orozco- Series
About:
Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist, born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, and educated at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984 and at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid between 1986 and 1987. Orozco gained notoriety in the early 1990s with his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation.
Orozco uses the urban landscape and the everyday objects found within it to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination of the viewer. He considers philosophical problems, such as the concept of infinity, and evokes them in humble moments, as in the photograph "Pinched Ball," which depicts a deflated soccer ball filled with water. Matching his passion for political engagement with the poetry of chance encounters, Orozco’s photographs, sculptures, and installations propose a distinctive model for the ways in which artists can affect the world with their work. Orozco works with mundane materials, mainly found objects. In a 2007 interview with BOMB Magazine, he said, "My urgent struggle was to find something that was not art."
Orozco helps me understand an approach for this project by coming up with a solid concept that is not predictable. With a predictable project, the coherent thought would be too boring and disengaging. By thinking about how Orozco tries to find things that does not look like art helps me to brainstorm concepts to connect images rather than being very simple and obvious.
Why I Was Influenced:
I enjoy Orozco’s watermelon and cat food photo because it combines two objects that are not thought of working together but work together in this photograph. Both the cat food and the watermelon can be purchased at a grocery store and are round, but those are the only unifying elements. I am inspired to find objects that only relate to each other in one or two ways to have the viewer ask more questions and explore the connections between the objects. This helps broaden my options with objects and finding interesting relationships to connect unifying elements between the five photographs.
Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist, born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, and educated at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984 and at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid between 1986 and 1987. Orozco gained notoriety in the early 1990s with his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation.
Orozco uses the urban landscape and the everyday objects found within it to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination of the viewer. He considers philosophical problems, such as the concept of infinity, and evokes them in humble moments, as in the photograph "Pinched Ball," which depicts a deflated soccer ball filled with water. Matching his passion for political engagement with the poetry of chance encounters, Orozco’s photographs, sculptures, and installations propose a distinctive model for the ways in which artists can affect the world with their work. Orozco works with mundane materials, mainly found objects. In a 2007 interview with BOMB Magazine, he said, "My urgent struggle was to find something that was not art."
Orozco helps me understand an approach for this project by coming up with a solid concept that is not predictable. With a predictable project, the coherent thought would be too boring and disengaging. By thinking about how Orozco tries to find things that does not look like art helps me to brainstorm concepts to connect images rather than being very simple and obvious.
Why I Was Influenced:
I enjoy Orozco’s watermelon and cat food photo because it combines two objects that are not thought of working together but work together in this photograph. Both the cat food and the watermelon can be purchased at a grocery store and are round, but those are the only unifying elements. I am inspired to find objects that only relate to each other in one or two ways to have the viewer ask more questions and explore the connections between the objects. This helps broaden my options with objects and finding interesting relationships to connect unifying elements between the five photographs.
Lorna Simpson- Series
About:
Lorna Simpson was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, and received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. When Simpson emerged from the graduate program at San Diego in 1985, she was already considered a pioneer of conceptual photography. Simpson was producing work that engaged the conceptual vocabulary of the time by creating exquisitely crafted documents that are as clean and spare as the closed, cyclic systems of meaning they produce. Her initial body of work alone helped to incite a significant shift in the view of the photographic art’s transience and malleability.
Lorna Simpson first became well-known in the mid-1980s for her large-scale photograph-and-text works that confront and challenge narrow, conventional views of gender, identity, culture, history and memory. With the African-American woman as a visual point of departure, Simpson uses the figure to examine the ways in which gender and culture shape the interactions, relationships and experiences of our lives in contemporary multi-racial America.
Why I Was Influenced:
Lorna has helped me realize that I do not need to over complicate this project with lots of different objets, views, techniques, etc. Lorna helps me understand that less is more. One technique, and one object can create very strong images. This inspires me to brainstorm one object and then how I can communicate a unifying element or elements with one object. I feel like this can create a strong series because it is deeply analyzing one object rather than trying to connect several different objects. Having the object in the same position, but slightly altering it is an interesting way of going about this project which will help me easily unify the five images. I just need to make sure that I am cautious about making sure I make a noticeable enough alteration so the images do not look too similar.
I used Lorna's series tehcingue in my final project by keeping the human body and oppsotie extremes consistent throughout the series. I only changes the sex, body type, and type of clothing for each image. This reflects Lorna's work becuase it shows that not a drastic change can still be succesful and tell a big story.
Lorna Simpson was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, and received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. When Simpson emerged from the graduate program at San Diego in 1985, she was already considered a pioneer of conceptual photography. Simpson was producing work that engaged the conceptual vocabulary of the time by creating exquisitely crafted documents that are as clean and spare as the closed, cyclic systems of meaning they produce. Her initial body of work alone helped to incite a significant shift in the view of the photographic art’s transience and malleability.
Lorna Simpson first became well-known in the mid-1980s for her large-scale photograph-and-text works that confront and challenge narrow, conventional views of gender, identity, culture, history and memory. With the African-American woman as a visual point of departure, Simpson uses the figure to examine the ways in which gender and culture shape the interactions, relationships and experiences of our lives in contemporary multi-racial America.
Why I Was Influenced:
Lorna has helped me realize that I do not need to over complicate this project with lots of different objets, views, techniques, etc. Lorna helps me understand that less is more. One technique, and one object can create very strong images. This inspires me to brainstorm one object and then how I can communicate a unifying element or elements with one object. I feel like this can create a strong series because it is deeply analyzing one object rather than trying to connect several different objects. Having the object in the same position, but slightly altering it is an interesting way of going about this project which will help me easily unify the five images. I just need to make sure that I am cautious about making sure I make a noticeable enough alteration so the images do not look too similar.
I used Lorna's series tehcingue in my final project by keeping the human body and oppsotie extremes consistent throughout the series. I only changes the sex, body type, and type of clothing for each image. This reflects Lorna's work becuase it shows that not a drastic change can still be succesful and tell a big story.