Whether working in photography, sculpture, painting, or video, Gabriel Orozco fashions the unexpected out of familiar materials. One of his most well known works Black Kites (1997), a real human skull adorned with a graphite checkerboard pattern (what Orozco has called a “skull-ture”), explores the notion of time, dealing with the subjects of life, death, and existence. Orozco’s typography on paper series entitled “Obit” (2008) is an examination—often a humorous one—of the language used in the New York Times obituaries, distilling an individual’s entire life into a short, idiosyncratic phrase. Orozco’s photographic works include both street photography of surprisingly moving moments as well as staged creations; and the artist’s installations can be reminders of the subtle beauty of typically-ignored objects, such as in his 1993 Home Run, installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Orozco placed oranges in the windows of adjacent apartment buildings.