Described by the artist as a drawing in three dimensions, Black Kites—a bleached human skull traversed by a graphite-pencil design—provocatively integrates structure and surface, line and volume. Gabriel Orozco’s aesthetic favors modest over monumental and reveals unexpected sensuality in common objects and materials. Although the skull is a motif deeply entrenched in the art and traditions of Orozco’s native Mexico, here it is transformed into a strikingly contemporary object of rich ambiguity. The title is typical of the artist’s allusive names for his works; the mental image of black diamond-shaped kites soaring in the sky transports the heavy, earthbound skull into an airborne poem. Black Kites is a skillful meditation on the complex act of creative thinking, an action that is simultaneously abstract and grounded in the experience of our finite bodies. Adelina Vlas and Ann Temkin, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014, p. 410.