Ping Pond Table (Mesa de ping-pong con estanque), 1998

Orozco’s Ping Pond Table (Mesa de ping-pong con estanque) splices and doubles a Ping-Pong table, replacing the net with a square pond filled with water lilies. Viewers are invited to play using the paddles and balls provided. However, each group of players must invent new rules and strategies, as no playbook for this game exists. Orozco’s primary concern as a sculptor is to activate the charged space between the art object and viewer. Ping Pond Table calls for a special kind of engagement in which museumgoers are not passive viewers but active participants. If games are microcosmic models that reflect our conceptions of the universe, then Ping-Pond Table asks the audience to reorder, communally and provisionally, the principles that structure our reality. In this way, the interactive sculpture establishes the museum as a public sphere and space for democratic civic engagement.