Orozco's work blurs the boundaries of art with everyday realities and often balances complex geometry with organic materials and elements of chance. Gabriel Orozco grew up in Mexico City in the cultural milieu of the Mexican left which was linked to muralism, photography and the political literature of the sixties and seventies. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. He currently lives and works mainly in Tokyo and Mexico City.

Orozco gained his reputation in the early 1990s with his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, and expanding later to include painting. His work blurs the boundaries of art with everyday realities and often balances complex geometry with organic materials and elements of chance.

Orozco has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California (2000), The Serpentine Gallery, London (2004), the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico (2006), the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2012), and a major retrospective which traveled from the Museum of Modern Art, New York to the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland, the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Tate Modern, London (2009-2011). Most recently his work has been presented at Winsing Art Place, Taipei, Taiwan (2024); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2016), the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Tokyo, Japan (2015) and the Moderna Museet, Sweden (2014).

Gabriel Orozco has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Honoris Causa Award, University of the Arts, Havana, Cuba (2015); the BlueOrange Prize (2006); and the DAAD Artist in Residence, Berlin, Germany (1995). He has participated in the Venice BIennale several times (2017, 2005, 2003, and 1993) and Documenta (2002, and 1997).

In 2016 Orozco completed the permanent Orozco Garden at the South London Gallery, UK, after almost three years of work. A unique, sculptural work, it was his first garden design and features over fifty varieties of plants. In 2019, Orozco was invited to design and coordinate the master plan for Chapultepec Park, an ongoing environmental and cultural project to be finished in 2024. In February 2023 Orozco celebrated the completion of his Calzada flotante (Floating Causeway). Designed by the artist as a large-scale pedestrian-only bridge, it is Orozco’s first architectural public project in Mexico.