Born in 1979, Ariel Orozco was predominantly influenced by the 1990s. A collective of artists working in the United Kingdom, who came to be known as the YBAs, or Young British Artists, defined the artistic culture of the 1990s. Affiliated loosely by their age and nationality, they were a varied collective of practitioners. Many of the YBAs attended the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths in London, and were favoured by the ‘super collector’ of the time, Charles Saatchi. The most renowned member of the group is Damien Hirst, and other members included Chris Ofili, Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Gavin Turk, Sarah Lucas and Sam Taylor-Johnson (née Sam Taylor-Wood). The YBAs became famous for their use of shock tactics and sensationalism, alongside their use of throwaway materials, wild lifestyles and an attitude that was defiant yet enterprising. Due to the high amount of media coverage that they received, they dominated British art during the 1990s, and their work was epitomised in the group show ‘Sensation’. Relational Aesthetics, a term coined by curator Nicholas Bourriaud to describe the act of creating art based on human relations and their social context, became a key idea in the 1990s. Works by artists including Douglas Gordon, Gillian Wearing, Philippe Parenno and Liam Gillick were described as important artists who worked to this outline.

Working within a diverse array of mediums, Ariel Orozco moves seamlessly between performance, painting and installation in his conceptually driven practice. Often taking

the form of interventions or actions, his work reflects on those overlooked interactions of everyday life by providing a new or alternative perspective. Encompassing the deeply

personal to the completely public, he nevertheless imbues his work with a compassion that is universal. Always seeking to give his audience an awareness of the people and

things that surround us, his artwork provides moments of contemplation to reflect on the vagaries and marvels of life. Deeply symbolic and startlingly simple, Orozco’s work

speaks a universal language accessible to all.

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