Artist, Gabriel Orozco: I was storing my works small pieces and objects and stuff in shoeboxes, and you know, recycling a shoebox to store things is a very common thing, I guess. So, when I was invited in 1993 in the Venice Biennial, you have a kind of booth or a kind of small space in a very long corridor which is divided in small spaces for all the artists to show there. It’s a very long one, it feels very, impersonal. So this shoebox it was representing the space it was shown. I think it was like a space, into space, into space, into space.
The title is Empty Shoebox. That they have no mystery makes it very mysterious, I think. And also the size, it’s a small thing. It’s a very fragile object. I think all the qualities expresses many things that I’m interested in, in relation with sculpture.
A few hours before the opening I was checking out my space, and I couldn’t find the shoebox. So they took it out, like, think was trash. So I went out to the dumpster and it was right there, and I took it back and put it in again.
I was having fun when I show this work, because some people look at, laugh. Some people were serious some people threw coins on it, so I make a little bit of money. So you know, I think it was a combination between disappointment and amusement. Between surprise and skepticism. But I think, at the end, is what makes this a work that people think about, and it was, quite fun to watch the whole process.