Gabriel Orozco

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2005

New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, Gabriel Orozco, 2005

The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the illustration does not fully convey the reflective quality of the gold paint in the original. This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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"In my paintings I am thinking of the gravity point, the weight of a vertical axis, not only a vanishing point in the centre."
The artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, White Cube, Twelve Paintings and a Drawing, 2006. p. 21

Perfectly square in format and exquisitely executed in the artist's palette of ultramarine deep blue, cadmium red, titanium white and English green gold pigments, Samurai Tree (Invariant 5) is a stunning paragon of Gabriel Orozco's eponymous and widely-acclaimed series. The rhythmic geometric design of repetitive forms consists of perpendicular and arched units that are imbued with a sense of both movement and absence through their apparently unfinished schemas. Inspired by a move in the game of Chess, Orozco initiated the series through drawings made on graph paper, before applying certain geometric structures in collage and finally moving to painting. The layout of the iconographic components is determined by a complex equation with fixed parameters, and the various contortions and possibilities of this equation are generated through a computer. While the implication of circles denotes the cyclical characteristic of Nature, the continuous permutations and mutations, both within this work and the entire series, produce a structure that is in a constant state of flux. Samurai Tree (Invariant 5) is among the most beautiful and resolved example of this conceptual artist's painted works.