Ortega’s work explores specific economic, aesthetic and cultural situations and in particular how regional culture affects commodity consumption. As a former political cartoonist, his work has an intellectualism to it that I like, but it's also beautiful and playful.
I love the way he explores how pieces come together to make a whole. I look at a company very much the same way - lots of individual ideas, people, systems, products, etc coming together to create something larger than the sum of the parts. Take a look at a few of his pieces and you'll see what I mean:
Cosmic Thing (2002) Ortega disassembled a Volkswagen Beetle car and re-composed it piece by piece, suspended from wire in mid-air, in the manner of a mechanic’s instruction manual. The result was both a diagram and a fragmented object that offered a new way of seeing.
Controller of the Universe (2007) Ortega assembled found tools and wire in a visually stunning way - who new old rakes and picks could be so sexy!
Here's a selection of other works by Ortega that caught my eye:
As Sebastian Smee said, "For Damián Ortega, ideas and things, far from being connected by logic, have a deeper, unaccountable relationship, amounting to a kind of magic act. It’s a relationship that’s destructive one minute and creative the next, but it’s never less than funny."
No comments:
Post a Comment