This week, Gabriel Orozco’s Asterisms opened at the Guggenheim museum. Asterisms is a two part sculptural and photographic installation. The project consists of thousands of discarded objects collected by the artist.  The objects, which includes dozens of bottles, hats, sports balls, and chewing gum, are arranged in a taxonomic system that delights the viewer with fluid subtle shifts in form, color, and texture.

While not constructed in a conventional textile tradition, Asterisms explores texture and materiality with the same depth and fervor, which is so engaging in contemporary fiber art. The Artist Creates compositions whose flow is aided, rather than impeded, by the  disparate elements of texture and form at play.

In both Sandstars (right) and Astroturf Constellation (left), Orozco seems to use  found objects as marks.  This exploration of found object as mark is something truly fresh, and inspiring in its ingenuity and original beauty.

Like Orozco’s earlier work, Asterism explores the juxtaposition of nature and culture, as well as systems of organization. Exhibition organizer Nancy Spector describes the work as, “a provocative oscillation between the macro and the micro, invokes several of the artist’s recurring motifs, including the traces of erosion, poetic encounters with mundane materials, and the ever-present tension between nature and culture. It also underscores and amplifies Orozco’s subtle practice of subjecting the world to personal, idiosyncratic systems.”

Gabriel Orozco’s Asterisms is on view through January 13 at the Guggenheim museum.