Public Nature is Gabriel Orozco’s first commissioned photographic series and his first large-scale public art project in the United States. The exhibition explores the relationship between nature and the built environment—not as opposites, but as systems continually shaping one another. Vines wrapped around pipes, landscapes formed by piles of dirt and trash, and street stalls filled with plastic animals appear in compositions that highlight moments of friction across forms of infrastructure. Known for his attention to overlooked details of daily life and for working beyond the confines of the studio, Gabriel Orozco captured these images while walking through public spaces.

Installed on 300 JCDecaux bus shelters across New York City, Chicago, and Boston, the 12 photographs function as trompe l’oeil interventions, dissolving the boundary between image and site. They extend the surrounding city into the frame and vice versa, creating perceptual loops that shift as the viewer moves. In one photograph, a tree grows through a concrete wall; when installed on a bus shelter, its roots might appear to extend into the sidewalk below and its branches into those of a nearby tree. In this way, Orozco uses images as sculptural material to reconfigure the spatial experience of the city. 

The works invite viewers to notice situations in which natural and urban elements intertwine in accidental ways. Rather than presenting them as isolated oddities, Orozco suggests that they emerge from conditions that recur throughout the world. For him, “nature” is understood broadly: as organic matter, but also as decay, entropy, and the traces of human activity. The term also prompts questions about what constitutes the essence of public space and how it is defined through adaptation, accumulation, and time. Orozco’s images offer a subtle, poetic reflection on contemporary cities as shared and evolving environments.

Gabriel Orozco: Public Nature is curated by Public Art Fund Associate Curator of Public Practice Gabriela López Dena.

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