Leave it to young artists to make a statement about their convictions rather than produce commercially viable work.
That is what 25-year-old Francisco Orozco has done in his first solo show, a combination of paintings, installations and objets d’art entitled “Crash!!! With The Lights Out,” showing at the venerable, city-supported Casa Museo Lopez Portillo until February 19.
Thank goodness that Orozco’s art, which considering his theme could have subjected viewers to a big dose of blood and guts, instead takes the tack of depicting vehicles and parts of vehicles (even toy cars) in a post-crash state of ruin. He does put several brown blood-like stains on walls in the corners of the room, but these, he says, represent machine oil rather than blood and are made from, of all things, coffee, which to him suggests rawness and impermanence. Even his paintings, done on newspaper sheets and sometimes using coffee for paint, likewise suggest impermanence. Orozco says that his painted images came from his imagination, although they show an affinity to meticulously observe vehicles, probably not uncommon in young men.
No, it is apparently not nihilism or destruction that sparks this soft-spoken, polite artist’s imagination. “It’s the management of anger and its consequences ...” he explains. “when we lose our heads and we can’t go back.
“Everyone experiences anger,” he continues. “When I did, I became introspective and expressed it via these pieces rather than expressing it in an ugly way.” (Even the coffee, he says, can be part of anger, as he knows people that drink a lot of it in an attempt to tranquilize themselves, but instead end up having an angry explosion.)
Orozco’s show includes a large painted image of a tank — “It represents military aggression” — a series of damaged hubcaps found on the streets and made into wall clocks — “Time can lead us to lose control” — tire tracks, an image of a flight recorder or black box, and a poem written by a fellow artist and painted on the wall.
Orozco, who is about to graduate from the University of Guadalajara’s school of art, says that he is planning another project that will utilize linoleum printmaking.
Casa Museo Lopez Portillo, Liceo 177 (about four blocks north of Guadalajara’s main cathedral). (33) 1201-8720. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Free entrance.