The Takeda Family Residence in Arimatsu is a merchant house descended from Takeda Shokuro, who established a new village along the Tokaido road in 1608 and started the Arimatsu shibori (tie-dyeing) business. Among these, the “Saisho-an” tearoom is the oldest structure, and is said to have been visited by Tokugawa Iemochi, the 14th Tokugawa Shogun. Gabriel Orozcoʼs Roto Shaku series was inspired by the shaku, a unit of length widely used in East Asia, including Japan. The shaku is said to be based on the length of an outstretched thumb and index finger or arm bone, and is still used in Japan in such fields as architecture and Japanese dressmaking. The Roto Shaku are made from the most common wooden building material, in lengths of 6 shaku (182 cm) and 3 shaku (91 cm). This length also corresponds to that of tatami straw mats in a tearoom. On its surface, geometric shapes have been formed using colorful industrial tapes, such as curing and masking tape.

Displayed in the tokonoma alcove and on the walls is Orozcoʼs Obi Scroll series, hanging scrolls made of old Japanese fabric along with sculptures carved out of marble in various circular shapes and drawings on notepads that were given to him by a cab driver. For the hanging scrolls, old fabrics are cut into circles and eye circular shapes and inverted. All of these, from the Roto Shaku and Obi Scrolls to the drawings on the taxi pad, share a certain sense of movement based on rotation, inversion, and repetition. In Zen Buddhism, the circular enso form in calligraphy is depicted as the symbol of an infinite universe with neither beginning nor end, and the works that Orozco has placed in Saisho-an also allude to a state of infinite connection and change as each circle begins to rotate, creating relationships with each other and the history of materials and space. Tearooms and tea bowls are often likened to unique cosmic spaces, and here, too, a new infinite universe seems to have been created.

Since the 1990s, Gabriel Orozco has been active at the forefront of the field of contemporary art that has spread around the world, producing works within everyday landscapes evoking a certain universality that transcends cultures. He held major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2009, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2015.

Selected Works & Awards

2016

Gabriel Orozco, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA

2015

Gabriel Orozco - Inner Cycles, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan

2009－2011

Gabriel Orozco, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; and the Tate Modern, London, UK,etc.

Exhibition

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Photo: ToLoLo studio