Gabriel Orozco at MOMA

"I don't like a big enterprise of people working for me," he said. "I don't want to be a master. I want to be a kid. To keep making art, you have to put yourself in the position of a beginner. You have to be excited by a stone on the sidewalk or, like a child, the flight of a bird."

In 1993, the year that he created "La DS," Mr. Orozco's career took off with multiple exhibitions. Among them was one that Marian Goodman arranged at the Venice Biennale, where he showed "Empty Shoebox," an open cardboard box left on the floor to be kicked about. "It shocked everybody," Ms. Goodman said. "He has a lot of courage in what he does and can be quite radical."

"La DS," a well-polished silver Citroën sliced lengthwise and reassembled without the middle third, is Mr. Orozco's signature work, a totemic French car remade in a Peugeot garage on the outskirts of Paris in 1993.