Lucas Orozco (b.1993, Madrid) is a visual artist who graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2021 and is currently a researcher in OID Oficina de Investigación Documental in MediaLab-Matadero.
His practice enquires into the effects of the discovery of the New World on the development of modern taxonomy —as a universal system for the classification of unknown species— and how it fostered the establishment of a mono-dimensional way of reading through the Enlightened principles of the chronological, the comparative and the evolutionary; still sustained by institutional bodies - heirs of colonial power structures such as the museum and academia.
For RSA New Contemporaries, he presents a series of works that revolve around a plaster cornice manufactured through the historical mould of the Borghese Gladiator from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando collection, brought by Velázquez from Rome to Spain in a royalfunded commission during the 17th century.
By perpetually losing their image, the casts assume the generic image of all things exhibited. In these works, the condition of the plaster cast and electroformed copper as subjects devoid of stable meanings is used to intentionally generate a set of problems in their categorisation through traditional systems of classification. They are turned into devices that explicitise the logic behind collecting and depicting the world within the intimidating spaces that not only regulate the image of the original and its copies but also their places of origin; legitimising, simultaneously, their spaces of exhibition and their possessors.
In collaboration with the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Deeply grateful to: Estrella de Diego, Violeta Herranz, Héctor López, Paula Alonso, Paola B. Pérez, Ángel Luis Rodríguez, Cristina del Pozo and Enrique Orozco.
