Gabriel Orozco at MoMA

The Mexican-born artist Gabriel Orozco is the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As both the preview and review articles in The New York Times point out, there are major differences between this show and Orozco's first solo show at MoMA 16 years ago. The earlier show was an unusually furtive show in which the artist used the museum's nooks and corners to display furtive, threadbare pieces of art. The current exhibition, by contrast, is centered on "Mobile Matrix," an enormous whale skeleton fitted onto a metal armature. (See the photo above.) Depending on your point of view, the current exhibit will either solidify or throw into question Orozco's status as one of the major conceptual artists of his generation.

Decide for yourself: Here are the preview and reviews from the Times. Peter Schjeldahl's thoughtful review in The New Yorker mentions the recently published October Files collection on Orozco, edited by Yve-Alain Bois.