Gabriel Orozco at the Tate

Private view - started at 7.00, we were in time to actually see the exhibition before it got too crowded and before those who were just there to be seen arrived. The work ranges wildly in scale from objects that can be held to huge collections that fill up a gallery. It demands closer inspection, the beauty of it is in the detail - the skin prints on ceramic, wrinkles in the paint of pictures made by folding to create symmetrical prints, telephone numbers from the telephone book, pieces of blown out tyres that curl and fray like seaweed, lines drawn with a ruler with blips that go round fingers overhanging, lint from tumble dryers that is grey fluff barely holding together full of hair and threads and flakes. It is playful and funny - the one seat wide Citroen that looks like a glider plane or a racing car, fan with toilet rolls that spiral from each blade. Quietly clever beautiful photographs - concentric ripples across a pond that is actually a puddle on a roof, bicycle tracks circling through two puddles, watermeloncats. I like this work alot. Some of it was very familiar, definitely had a feeling I had seen some of it before.  I hadn't realised I was standing next to the artist and his son in one of the galleries until I came out and saw a video. Later I threw off my London nonchalantness and asked him to sign my copy of the catalogue. He was very obliging and afterwards held my hand in both of his as we shook  and said it was a pleasure meeting me, despite the fact I barely said two words to him and we really only shared an intense look. When I got home and shelved the books I found a catalogue from the ICA in 1996 where I had seen some of the work before. Its not often I feel as inspired and excited by an exhibition as this. I loved it, worth a look.

Reviews:
Metro
Laura Mclean-Ferris in the Independent