South of the Border…

Mexico's history of art has been one of politics, folk traditions, colonial frustration and intense color. Contemporary artist Gabriel Orozco transformed that by emerging as one of Mexico's most inventive and boundary-breaking contemporary artists over the past two decades. His work, which has been corralled for a major retrospective at MOMA, New York, and an accompanying book this month, is conceptual and poetic—from installations of exploding cars to checkerboard skulls to graphic images of sport.