Gabriel Orozco

Gabriel Orozco’s sculptural work Shade Between Rings of Air, 2003, was created in relation to La Pensilina (1952), an architectural structure designed by architect Carlo Scarpa for the Central Pavilion in the Giardini of the Venice Biennale. Invited to the 2003 Biennale entitled Dreams and Conflicts. The Dictatorship of the Viewer, in which he also participated as curator of the exhibition Everyday Altered, Orozco became interested in Scarpa’s structure, which was in a state of semi-abandonment. La Pensilina attracted him both as an architectural element and because of its ruined condition, hidden by the foliage of the surrounding plants, among which it found itself at the time. “I thought,” says the artist, “that patio was a beautiful piece of sculpture, somewhere between a corridor, a passageway, an opening, a fountain, a roof. It had been designed as a sculptural garden on a small scale. It had been abandoned, and nature was taking over. It almost seemed like a Mayan pyramid or a Cambodian ruin. It was truly abandoned.” Orozco carried out a series of studies related to La Pensilina, the history of which is part of a long and fruitful collaboration between the architect and the Biennale. The structure was conceived for an interior courtyard, created by Scarpa by demolishing the roof of an exhibition hall in the Central Pavilion and removing the plaster on the walls to uncover the bricks beneath. The architect’s idea was to create a sculpture garden. Also inspired by Japanese culture, he designed La Pensilina in relation to other elements, including four water basins of different sizes in this new outdoor courtyard that he created. The extreme cohesion of Scarpa’s project, which, as Orozco notes, is a sculpture in its own right, perhaps contributed to its brief use as an exhibition venue, and the artist found a few photographs documenting its use as a sculptural garden. Shade Between Rings of Air is a 1:1 scale copy of Scarpa’s structure. Orozco embraced the original project, in which he recognized balances and relationships pertaining to his own research, starting with his preference for circular forms. In fact, La Pensilina has a design based entirely on curved lines, which is true of the projecting upper section, traced from the encumbrances of three circles of different radius, as well as the columns below, with their characteristic ogival shape formed by the intersection of two loops of the same radius. Even by using wood instead of the concrete comprising La Pensilina, Orozco seems to suggest that his work can be interpreted as a model, triggering an unexpected temporal relationship, which is consequential to the finished architecture instead of positing itself at an earlier time. Implementing a further shift in the original installation, on the occasion of the first presentation at the Biennale, the artist placed his work in a room adjoining the inner courtyard that houses La Pensilina and set it up in a position rotated by 90 degrees compared to the original. Subsequent presentations of Shade Between Rings of Air outside Venice have further highlighted the set of cultural, temporal, and formal relationships it contains, including its ability to propose an experience that captures the ephemeral temporality of light and air, as suggested by the poetic title given to the work by the artist.

Marcella Beccaria