Gabriel Orozco

A Wicked Game

D eceptively simple in appearance, Kiss of the Egg (1997)

(PLATE 28) is an irreverent installation that poses numerous and

multivalent challenges to both art institutions and the viewers

to bring to light the labor underpinning the museum system.1
Orozco’s is a small, yet defiant gesture wherein institutions and
their audiences must grapple with, among other things, issues
who engage with it. Created by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco surrounding who will be assigned the unwanted task of cleaning up
(b. 1962), it consists of a thin steel pipe arranged into a figure eight and/or replacing the eggs on view.
that balances a chicken’s egg at its center. The form is suspended
parallel to the floor so that two people may enter the installa- Since the 1990s, Orozco has generated a wide body of work that
tion and jointly attempt to kiss the egg without knocking it over. weaves together his interest in abstract, geometric structures
In the act, participants may feel extremely self-conscious both and everyday social concerns. Many of his pieces introduce or
because they are engaging in an absurdly staged form of kissing in accentuate geometry with mundane materials, such as food pack-
public and because of the risk of breaking the egg. Museums could aging, paper currency, and airplane boarding passes, and sites like
have a difficult time exhibiting the work as originally intended; grocery store shelves and apartment windows. Circles and ovals
concerns about logistics, hygiene, and the protection of nearby frequently provide structure to his images.2 Perhaps best known
objects lead to considerations about substituting raw eggs with for his Atomists series (1996), the artist painted computer-based
ones drained of their yolks, scheduling times for interaction, or patterns onto British newspaper images of athletes, which he then
prohibiting contact with the work altogether, choosing instead to enlarged (FIG. 1) . These patterns add ambiguity and dynamism to
describe the ­performative aspects of the piece on a museum label. otherwise typical images of sport.
Nevertheless, there is much we can still appreciate about Kiss
of the Egg without actually participating or simply by imagining Kiss of the Egg represents the continuation of Orozco’s inves-
interactions with the piece. We may admire the formal beauty of tigations of geometry and the human form in action, this time
the work, consider the symbolism of the egg, the contexts of the expanded into three dimensions, particularly at the moment when
exhibition, or the politics behind who we imagine interacting with the work’s steel forms encircle two people kissing. Even without
the piece. In fact, through these observations and imaginings we participants, Kiss of the Egg remains a visually striking construction
begin to understand many of Orozco’s artistic interests, including in space. Comparisons could be made with the hanging sculptures
challenging various hierarchies and power relations. As an interac- of Russian Constructivism, particularly Aleksandr Rodchenko’s
tive work, Kiss of the Egg poses an institutional problem designed Spatial Constructions (1920–21), in which paltry scraps of wood

GABRIEL OROZCO, Mexican, b. 1962 | Kiss of the E gg, 1997 | © Gabriel Orozco, Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery
Photo: Thomas R. DuBrock, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

CONTINGENT BEAUTY 170 171

 create dynamic shapes in space (FIG. 2) . Simpler in form, Kiss of the setting. These so-called accidents are designed to counter the contact that is at once intimate and deliberately ridiculous with
Egg elevates the egg into a focal point, its geometry echoed in the museum’s usual position as a pristine site for viewing art. Orozco an egg—which may (or may not) result in its splattering in the
bowed infinity shape. In this apparatus the egg becomes a strange comments, “We think of an accident as an unfortunate instant; gallery—Orozco brings some of the chaos and uncertainty of the
object—a form to be contemplated as art and cultural symbol (of we think that we are in reality living in a state of constant stabil- outside world into the typically tranquil museum. The process
birth and fertility, a food, a common tool of protest or vandalism, ity and that an accident interrupts that stability. But one could reenacts a common state of affairs, wherein the leisure and enjoy-
etc.). Orozco describes his art as an “instrument of awareness” see it in reverse: that we live in a constant state of accident and ment by some results in a mess to be cleaned up by others.
for viewers to question their everyday assumptions and cultural that stability is the moment of exception.” Kiss of the Egg, then,
6

references. He explains that such ambitious aims can be achieved

3
offers a destabilizing reversal. By encouraging a kind of physical MICHAEL WELLEN
through modest gestures, noting that the image of “a wisp of
breath on a piano . . . can have a stronger impact on our memory
than a skyscraper ever could.” 4

Kiss of the Egg is one of several works in his production intended

to operate both as sculptural form and interactive game. His FIG. 3 | Gabriel Orozco | Carambole with Pendulum, 1996 | Modified billiard table and billiard balls | 35 x 122 3/4 x 90 in. (89 x 311.8 x 228.6 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Marion Goodman Gallery, New York | Photo: Carol Shaford
better-known Ping Pond Table (1998) and Carambole with Pendulum
(1996) re-format familiar parlor games into new ones requiring
participants to construct their own rules of play (FIG. 3) . Again,
these games could be understood as part of Orozco’s interest in
intertwining physical movement and geometry.5 However, Kiss of
the Egg presents various social implications as well.

Orozco debuted the work at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de

Paris in 1998 in a solo exhibition titled Clinton Is Innocent, when
media coverage about the affair between U.S. President Bill Clinton
and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky was at its height.
Kiss of the Egg was the only work in this exhibition that directly
referenced physical intimacy. In that context, the work seemed a
provocation to consider the national and international repercus-
sions of the scandal; to examine our own expectations about
the responsibility of political leaders; to ruminate on the fluid
boundaries between public and private life and the power relations
hinging on sex and forbidden behavior.
| Gabriel Orozco | Atomists: Crews Battle, 1996 | Computer-generated prints
FIG. 1
78 ¼ x 105 ¾ in. (198.8 x 268.6 cm) | © Gabriel Orozco, Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery
Alternatively, we may wish to see Kiss of the Egg as a conceptual
FIG. 2 | Aleksandr Rodchenko, Russian, 1891–1956 | Spatial Construction No. 12, c. 1920
Plywood, open construction partially painted with aluminum paint, and wire
prank, in which the artist, with the collusion of others, repeatedly
24 x 33 x 18 ½ in. (61 x 83.8 x 47 cm) eggs the museum, gallery, or private collector’s home. While play-
Acquisition made possible through the extraordinary efforts of George and ers may not intend to knock over eggs, breaking them is essential
Zinaida Costakis, and through the Nate B. and Frances Spingold, Mathew H. and
Erna Futter, and Enid A. Haupt Funds. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
to the design; visitors are “egged on”—in the sense that they are
Digital Image copyright The Museum of Modern Art-Licensed by SCALA-Art Resource, New York encouraged to do something typically prohibited inside a gallery

CONTINGENT BEAUTY 172 Gabriel Orozco 173

NOTES

1 3
Throughout his career Orozco has Gabriel Orozco and Benjamin
constantly tested the boundaries H.D. Buchloh, “Gabriel Orozco in
of exhibition and institutional Conversation with Benjamin H. D.
platforms. In 1993, he famously Buchloh (2004)” in Gabriel Orozco:
submitted an empty shoebox to the October Files 9, ed. Yve-Alain Bois
Venice Biennale. Other challenges to (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009),
exhibition space include his Parking 119.
Lot (1995) in which he opened up the 4
Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp, Carmen Boullosa and Gabriel Orozco,
to traffic, permitting the public to “Gabriel Orozco,” Bomb 98 (Winter
park cars there for the duration of 2007): 71.
the exhibition. Scholars and critics 5
have thoroughly examined these Orozco comments that these are
works and their attendant concerns the common parameters of all of his
in various monographs on the artist. work: “I like to include in every work
See critical essays by Ann Temkin, . . . the organic, that is, the specific
Benjamin Buchloh, and Briony Fer in body doing something, and the
Gabriel Orozco, ed. Ann Temkin (New geometric, the platonic or the abstract,
York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009). mechanical and instrumental
2 repetitive action on the same object.”
This aspect of Orozco’s work Buchloh and Orozco, 111.
was recently explored in Briony 6
Fer’s exhibition and catalogue Gabriel Orozco, “Interview with
Gabriel Orozco: Thinking in Circles Guillermo Santamarina,” in Gabriel
(Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, Orozco (Madrid: Museo Nacional
2013). Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2005).

PLATE 28 | GABRIEL OROZCO, Mexican, b. 1962 | Kiss of the E gg, 1997 | Steel, cable, and egg | 28 1/2 x 47 1/4 x 22 in. (72.4 x 120 x 55.9 cm)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of the Chaney family, 2012.569 | © Gabriel Orozco, Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery
Photo: Thomas R. DuBrock, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

CONTINGENT BEAUTY 174 Gabriel Orozco 175