Gabriel Orozco: OXXO

Gabriel Orozco proposes a game where logos and the rules of the market are set against each other, as two forms of understanding an ever-growing capitalist world in the midst of collapse: the art market and the market of household appliances in a supermarket within an art gallery.

In an full-scale association of functional operations, kurimanzutto gallery will open an OXXO, the most wide-spread convenience store in the country, which will operate as such for the duration of thirty-working days within the gallery in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood. Developed in the twentieth century, supermarkets took a clear direction: they offered functionality, standardization, and cheap prices.

OXXO, a chain of convenience stores in Mexico, opened its first store in 1978 in Monterrey. Today it has over 14,000 stores and it is the largest of its kind in Mexico. Over ten million customers are served every day; 104,000 people are employed; and 1,208 new stores were opened last year alone. In this one-of-a-kind association, unique in its scale, the entities put forth by Orozco will operate in their double identity and functionality, inviting a game of icons in which both universes participate: the world of everyday goods and the art world. With 300 products intervened within the OXXO, which could potentially reach up to 3000 works produced, this scenario combines the modes of production, consumption and pricing of both entities.