Damian Ortega's work explores specific economic, aesthetic and cultural situations and in particular how regional culture affects commodity consumption.

He began his career as a political cartoonist and his art has the intellectual rigour and sense of playfulness often associated with his previous occupation. He creates sculptures, installations, videos and actions inspired by a wide range of mundane objects, from golf balls and pick-axes to bricks, rubbish bins and even tortillas, all subjected to what has been described as Ortega's characteristically "mischievous process of transformation and dysfunction". In Cosmic Thing (2002), one of his most celebrated works, Ortega disassembled a Volkswagen Beetle car and re-composed it...