Artist and architect Jorge Orozco Gonzalez is exhibiting a collection of his distinct drawings in the show Eleven Years, Eleven Months and Fourteen Days at Akademie Schloss Solitude. The images are of himself, his interests, obsessions, fears, his utter and complete happiness, as he explains. The oldest drawing in the show is eleven years old, and the newest work will be finished right before the opening.
The portrait and specifically self portraiture are recurrent throughout his artwork, and even find their way into his architecture projects as well – the artist explains:»I have always hated the way I look, and been embarrassed and unhappy about the whole thing. And worried much too much of how others view me, what their perception is of my physicality and what indications it might make of my personality. I think the portraits are a way of me articulating a version, vision, of myself that I am in complete control of. They have nothing to do with me in a way, and that is what I like about them. I am very private, but my art is not – its sort of all there if anyone wants to see it.« His art and architecture can supplant each other at times, but there still remains a rapport between the two: »I am interested in the possibility of this bifurcated practice. And more than anything working through the ways they can contradict one another while both fundamentally being about the exact same thing, drawing.« When asked what inspired the work in the exhibition, Jorge answers: »What always does, an overwhelming fear of death.«
The Blind Men and the Elephant
John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approach’d the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
»God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!«
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, -»Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!«
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
»I see,« quoth he, »the Elephant
Is very like a snake!«
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
»What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,« quoth he,
»’Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!«
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: »E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!«
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
»I see,« quoth he, »the Elephant
Is very like a rope!«
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!