I believe the most stunning piece in the retrospective of Mexican conceptual artist Gabriel Orozco’s work at MoMA is “Mobile Matrix,” and not just because it’s so grand. There’s just something fascinating about it from every angle and staring at it is such a simple pleasure. And I do mean every possible angle, I made poor Husband march around the whole museum so that we could peer into the atrium from every floor and from every hallway. If we’d been allowed to dangle from the ceiling like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible my viewing pleasure would have been absolute.

The piece is a wired whale skeleton that has been inscribed with graphite, 6,000 mechanical pencil leads worth, if the New York Times is correct.

I’d still be standing there staring at the piece if Husband hadn’t created a distraction by yelling, “Look, over there! A Salvador Dali piece with ants stamped on it!”

Here’s a video of “Mobile Matrix” being installed for the MoMA show:

Images of all of the work in the show are available in this interactive gallery on MoMA’s website. Like most, if not all, conceptual art, the images do lose something in the translation.