Balones acelerados
Gabriel Orozco
Accelerated Balls
For the 2005 re-inauguration of the Museo Experimental El Eco, Gabriel Orozco presented a set of used soccer balls intervened with die-casting molds, which he had been working with for several years. As the story goes, Orozco found some of these balls in a neighbor’s yard; tired of returning them to the middle school next door when they landed on her property, she had simply started to keep them. The collection was completed with balls belonging to the UNAM soccer team known as the Pumitas. As a trade, Orozco offered one new ball for every two old ones.
More than the timeworn confrontation with a found object, Balones acelerados proposes a confrontation with time. The everyday sight of a deflated ball enters an emotional terrain, triggering childhood memories of pick-up games.
As in this piece, Orozco’s work stimulates our relationship with our memories in response to compact, seemingly ordinary gestures. At the same time, it reflects on sculpture in association with social structure and plays with the scale of the individual in relation to the object and one’s own memory.
GABRIEL OROZCO (1962)
Balones acelerados, 2005
Accelerated Balls
Installation. 165 intervened balls
Acquisition, 2006
