Gabriel Orozco

The concepts that the curators wanted to instill in the site were "playful" and "simplicity". So, in pursuit of a playful spirit, the overarching website concept was for the user interaction to subtly evoke a game of cards. To this end, the initial grid and subsequent layouts might suggest the formations of solitaire or a round of poker. The interaction is responsive, the movement is quick, and images, for the most part, are dealt into view from beyond the browser’s borders, suggesting a physical, as opposed to virtual, experience. We tried to achieve the never-simple ideal of simplicity by implementing a pared-down design that omits all but the essentials. We also distilled the act of browsing through works into two basic modes: chronological and associative. When viewing individual works, flanking arrows allow for chronological exploration, whereas conceptual, physical, and aesthetic connections to other works are represented by a surrounding “halo” of objects. The circle is important here not only because it is the artist’s preferred shape, but because it doesn’t introduce hierarchy to the related works.