Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto, Mexico City

Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto, Mexico City

Gabriel Orozco's exhibition at kurimanzutto is a key example of appropriation art and institutional critique. In it, he creates an actual convenience store inside of an art gallery. This convenience store is an OXXO, which is a large convenience chain originating in Mexico. This hybridization creates both a convenience store selling fine art and an art gallery selling mass-market products. Orozco sells products that already exist on the market, but intercepts their logos with his own. This is an example of subverting signification: directly appropriating imagery while nullifying it at the same time.  It is also important to note that both the gallery and OXXO were excited to work with Orozco on this exhibition, exemplifying institutional critique as part of the institution itself. The choice to use OXXO rather than any other chain was a deliberate postmodern move to contextualize the exhibition in the community it lives in, blurring the lines between art and "real life." Additionally, Orozco is appropriating an economic model in the vein of the wheat and chessboard problem (the store is set up like a "game" in which prices change exponentially) in order to comment on the function of capital in the art world.