Félix González-Torres (November 26, 1957 – January 9, 1996) was a Cuban-born American visual artist. González-Torres's openly gay sexual orientation was influential in his work as an artist. González-Torres was known for his minimal installations and sculptures in which he used materials such as strings of lightbulbs, clocks, stacks of paper, or packaged hard candies. In 1987, he joined Group Material, a New York-based group of artists whose intention was to work collaboratively, adhering to principles of cultural activism and community education. González-Torres' work ''"Untitled" (L.A.)'' (1991), a 50 lb. installation of green hard candies, sold for $7.7 million at Christie's in 2015.

Early life and career

González-Torres was born in Guáimaro, Cuba. In 1971, he and his sister Gloria were sent to Madrid where they stayed in an orphanage until settling in Puerto Rico with relatives the same year.Floating a Boulder: Works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Jim Hodges, October 1, 2009 - January 31, 2010
FLAG Art Foundation, New York. González-Torres graduated from Colegio San Jorge in 1976 and began his art studies at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico, San Juan while actively participating in the local art scene. He moved to New York City in 1979 with a study fellowship to study photography. The following year he participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitney Independent Study Program where his development as an artist was profoundly influenced by his introduction to critical theory. He attended the program a second time in 1983, the year he received a BFA in photography from the Pratt Institute, Pratt Institute of Art. In 1986, González-Torres traveled to Europe and studied in Venice. In 1987 he was awarded the degree of Master of Fine Arts by the International Center of Photography and New York University. Subsequently, he taught at New York University and briefly at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. In 1992 González-Torres was granted a German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD fellowship to work in Berlin, and in 1993 a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. González-Torres died in Miami in 1996 due to complications arising from AIDS.

Work

González-Torres was known for his quiet, minimal installations and sculptures. Using materials such as strings of lightbulbs, clocks, stacks of paper, or packaged hard candies, his work is sometimes considered a reflection of his experience with AIDS. As an openly gay man, he felt it was "much more powerful to assume that the gay and straight audience was the same audience, that being a Cuban-born American is the same as being an American. And being American was something he was extremely proud of." In 1987 he joined Group Material, a New York-based artist collaborative consisting of Doug Ashford, Julie Ault and Karen Ramspacher that adhered to principles of cultural activism and community education. Group Material was invited by the MATRIX Gallery at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 1989 to deal with the subject of AIDS. The result was Group Material's first "AIDS Timeline". All of Gonzalez-Torres's works, with few exceptions, are titled "Untitled" in quotation marks, sometimes followed by parenthetical title. (This was an intentional titling scheme by the artist).The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation Of González-Torres's nineteen candy pieces, only six, by their parenthetical titles and ideal weights, can be readily interpreted as portraits. Of these two are double portraits of the artist and his lover, Ross Laycock; two are portraits of Ross alone; one is a portrait of Felix's deceased father; and ''"Untitled" (Portrait of Marcel Brient)'' (1992) is a portrait of the artist's close friend, French collector Marcel Brient. Ross Laycock is also thought to have inspired many of González-Torres's other works, including ''"Untitled" (Perfect Lovers)'' (1991) and ''"Untitled" (Placebo)'' (1991).Diamond, Shawn. "Requiem for the Shadows: Poetry, Spirituality, and Future Memory in the Light Strings of Felix Gonzalez-Torres". Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2016. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=kent1461781004&disposition=inline . Retrieved October 26, 2017. For instance, in ''"Untitled" (Perfect Lovers)'', the two clocks are suggestive of the relationship between the two and their time spent together. With Laycock's death in 1991, González-Torres created works that could help him cope with the loss of his partner. These pieces, such as ''"Untitled" (Placebo)'', often involve installments that slowly disappear or expire over time — a metaphor for Laycock's passing due to AIDS-related illnesses. The most pervasive reading of González-Torres's work takes the processes his works undergo (lightbulbs expiring, piles of candies dispersing, etc.) as metaphor for the process of dying. However, many have seen the works also representing the continuation of life with the possibility of regeneration (replacing bulbs, replenishing stacks or candies). Other readings include the issue of public versus private, identity, and participation in contemporary art. His piece ''"Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)'' for example, illustrates not one, but combined moments that represent the history of the gay community. This may portray the dissolution of the gay community that was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. As a person eats the candy and throws it away, the pile decreases in size, which represents how society ignored the existence of this epidemic, which then led to deaths of many gay people. Inspired by an article published by ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine on July 17, 1989, Torres explored the relationship America has with guns with a piece named ''"Untitled" (Death by Gun)''. In his piece, González-Torres pays homage to the 460-people killed in America by gunshot in the week of May 1–7, 1989. He makes us reflect on the grim reality of the gun violence in America, presenting a sobering view of the many lives lost cut short. His piece is composed of a stack of lithographs with the picture of the deceased with the description of the individuals, their age, city and state where they lived, followed by a brief description of the cause of death. González-Torres makes us search our souls and our ethics as if calling for a review of the gun violence epidemic in the country.

Dateline installations

In his "dateline" pieces, begun in 1987, González-Torres assembled lists of various dates in random order interspersed with the names of social and political figures and references to cultural artifacts or world events, many of which related to political and cultural history. Printed in white type on black sheets of photographic paper by the "photostat" process, these lists of seeming non sequiturs prompted viewers to consider the relationships and gaps between the diverse references as well the construction of individual and collective identities and memories. González-Torres also produced dateline "portraits", consisting of similar lists of dates and events related to the subjects' lives. In ''"Untitled" (Portrait of Jennifer Flay)'' (1993), for example, "A New Dress 1971" lies next to "Vote for Women, NZ 1893".

Participatory artworks

González-Torres was considered within his time to be a process artist due to the nature of his 'removable' installations by which the process is a key feature to the installation. Many of his installations invite the viewer to take a piece of the work with them: a series of works allow viewers to take packaged candies from a pile in the corner of an exhibition space and, in so doing, contribute to the slow disappearance of the sculpture over the course of the exhibition. ''"Untitled" (Placebo)'', in one installation, consisted of a six-by-twelve-foot carpet of shiny silver wrapped candies. In 2011, the work ''"Untitled" (Placebo)'' was installed at the Museum of Modern Art in two large rectangles divided by a walkway for visitors. Like other candy pieces in his oeuvre, the works have "ideal weights" which may fluctuate during the course of an exhibition. A borrower may choose to install the work at a weight different than the "ideal weight". The candy pieces may also be installed in any formation the borrower desires. Ideally, the candy would be the "Fruit Flashers" brand manufactured by Peerless Confection Company in Chicago and wrapped in multicolored cellophane. However, Peerless Confection Company went out of business in 2006. In 1990 during Roni Horn's solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, González-Torres encountered her sculpture ''Forms from the Gold Field'' (1980–82), two pounds of pure gold compressed into a luminous rectangular mat. When he met Horn in 1993, he created ''"Untitled" (Placebo – Landscape – for Roni)'' (1993), an endlessly replaceable candy spill of gold cellophane–wrapped sweets. In 1989 González-Torres presented ''"Untitled" (Memorial Day Weekend)'' and ''"Untitled" (Veterans Day Sale)'', exhibited together as ''"Untitled" (Monuments)'': block-like stacks of paper printed with content related to his private life, from which the viewer is invited to take a sheet. Rather than constituting a solid, immovable monument, the stacks can be dispersed, depleted, and renewed over time. ''"Untitled"'' (1991), however, is a unique stack of 161 signed and numbered silkscreens that remain together. Similar to the 1989 billboard commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, its iteration as a stack of prints was meant, as the artist noted at the time, as a "more private and personal object"—one that is not disseminated physically but instead through the experience of remembering. The stark black page and white typeface on each sheet trace a nonlinear chronology of significant events in the history of the gay-rights movement. In addition to his signature "candy spill" and "stacks", González-Torres created other variable works referred to as "lightstrings", which consist of low-watt light bulbs on cords hung on the wall or piled on floor. Twenty-four nearly identical lightstrings exist, differentiated only by their parenthetical titles and the display chosen by each work's owner. Each sculpture can be arranged in any way a particular installer wishes, and thus holds the potential for unlimited variations. Over the course of any given installation, some of the bulbs are sure to burn out. In 1991 González-Torres began producing sculptures consisting of strands of plastic beads strung on metal rods, which often reference the organic and inorganic substances associated with battling AIDS. Each of González-Torres's works is governed by an accompanying certificate of authenticity that described the "ideal" materials and dimensions of each work, and outline the obligations of owners' of these works.

Billboards

One of his most recognizable works, ''"Untitled"'' (1991), was a billboard installed in twenty-four locations throughout New York City of a monochrome photograph of an unoccupied bed, made after the death of his long-time partner, Ross Laycock, from AIDS. In one interview, he said "When people ask me, 'Who is your public?' I say honestly, without skipping a beat, 'Ross'. The public was Ross. The rest of the people just come to the work." ''"Untitled" (It's Just a Matter of Time)'' is a billboard originally exhibited in 1992 in Hamburg in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Kunstverein in Hamburg titled "Gegendarstellung - Ethics/Aesthetics in Times of AIDS". It consists of a black background with white German text in Gothic typeface. In 1993, González-Torres mounted two simultaneous gallery exhibitions in Paris entitled Travel #1 and Travel #2: Travel #1 contained two billboards both installed inside the gallery, one featuring a view of a turbulent and brooding sky, the other an image of lone bird, photographed from below, floating effortlessly beneath an overcast sky; one of several works in "Travel #2" was ''"Untitled" (Passport #11)'', a stack of passport sized booklets featuring the same imagery as the billboards in Travel #1. Like his other stack pieces, viewers were invited to help themselves.

Institutional exhibitions

González-Torres continues to be exhibited internationally at galleries and museums. Retrospectives of his work have been organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, New York (1995), which traveled to the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany (1997); the Serpentine Gallery in London (2000); the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City (2010); Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in Middlesbrough, England; the Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the National Portrait Gallery (United States), National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; the FLAG Art Foundation in New York (2009); WIELS; the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland; and the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany in 2010–2011. In 2010, ArtPace in San Antonio organized a year-long retrospective of Felix González-Torres's billboards. The Istanbul Biennial in 2011, instead of choosing a theory or theme as a unifying rubric, mounted five group shows around the main themes that inspired González-Torres's work — love, death, abstraction, contested histories and territories.

U.S. Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale

In 2007, González-Torres was selected as the United States' official representative at the Venice Biennale, curated by Nancy Spector. The artist's previously controversial status influenced the 1995 decision to reject him for the Venice pavilion in favor of Bill Viola. His posthumous show (the only other posthumous representative from the United States was Robert Smithson in 1982) at the U.S. Pavilion featured, among others, ''"Untitled"'', 1992–95, a never-before-realized sculpture in the courtyard of the pavilion: two adjoining, circular reflecting pools, the sides of which touch just enough at a single point to share an almost undetectable flow of water. Between 1992 and 1995 González-Torres sketched at least five variations of these pools, expanding upon his motif of paired rings. The first known sketch for the twin pools represents González-Torres' submission to an outdoor sculpture competition sponsored by Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington in 1992
The drawing
indicates that each pool should be twelve-feet in diameter, a detail that would remain constant in each subsequent drawing and description. González-Torres returned to the motif in 1994 when planning a one-person exhibition for the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Bordeaux, which he postponed because of its proximity in time to his Guggenheim retrospective; he died before the show could be realized. For the Bordeaux installation, he envisioned a pair of indoor pools flush with the floor. When outlining his ideas for the exhibition, González-Torres also created a sketch of an outdoor version of the pools, and this is the one realized on the occasion of the Venice Biennale. Untitled and open-ended in terms of their possible materials, the pools presented here were carved from white Carrara marble.

''Felix González-Torres. Specific Objects without Specific Form''

Between 2010 and 2011, a traveling retrospective, "Felix González-Torres. Specific Objects without Specific Form", was shown at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, MMK in Frankfurt. At each of the stages of the exhibition tour, the show was initially installed by the exhibition's curator Elena Filipovic and, halfway through its duration, is completely reinstalled by a different selected artist whose own practice has been influenced by González-Torres. Artists Carol Bove, Danh Vo, and Tino Sehgal were chosen to curate the show's second half.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The Politics of Relation

In 2021, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, MACBA, the museum of contemporary art in Barcelona, presented ''Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The Politics of Relation''. The exhibition, curated by Tanya Barson, situated Gonzalez-Torres’ work "within the Postcolonialism, postcolonial discourse and the connected histories between Spain and the Americas, especially as these impact present-day questions around memory, authority, freedom and national identity". A particular emphasis was placed on reading Gonzalez-Torres's work "in relation to Culture of Spain, Spanish, Latin American culture, Latin American and Culture of the Caribbean, Caribbean culture, not as a simple, singular biographical narrative, but rather as a way of complicating any essentialist reading of his work through any single idea, theme or identity". The show proposed various interpretations stemming from this line of investigation and also highlighted the work's formative influence on queer aesthetics.

Legacy

In May 2002, the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation was created.METRO-MoMA Survey of Archives of Latino and Latin American Art: Felix Gonzalez-Torres
/ref> The Foundation hopes "to foster an appreciation for the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres among the general public, scholars, and art historians." Since 1990, González-Torres' work is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery, which heavily exhibited his work both before and after his death. The Foundation assisted the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in the organization of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Community Art Project, a three-year initiative that sponsors visits of internationally renowned contemporary artists to the campus of the school. The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation is still overseen by Andrea Rosen but is now operating in collaboration with David Zwirner Gallery, New York. In the second decade of the 21st century the critical legacy of González-Torres' work has continued to be expanded and challenged. In 2010 Artforum published an article by artist and critic Joe Scanlan titled ''The Uses of Disorder'' that took a darker look at the soft power and neoliberal economics at play in González-Torres' work. In 2017 there was public outcry over the fact that David Zwirner Gallery mounted an extensive exhibition of González-Torres' work but made no mention of the role that AIDS played in the works' conceptual formation, either in the exhibition proper or its press release.

Art market

González-Torres's 1992 piece ''"Untitled" (Portrait of Marcel Brient)'' sold for $4.6 million at Phillips de Pury & Company in 2010, a record for the artist at auction at the time. In 2011, ''"Untitled" (Aparición)'', 1991, a stack of endlessly replenishable paper, each sheet printed with a black-and-white image of clouds, was sold well over the estimate for $1.6 million at Sotheby's, New York. One of the artist's plastic beads pieces, ''"Untitled" (Blood)'', was sold for $1.65 million at Christie's, New York, in 2000. In November 2015, at a record for the artist, González-Torres's ''"Untitled" (L.A.)'', 1991, a 50 lb. installation of green hard candies, sold for $7.7 million at Christie's, New York.

Notable works in public collections

*''"Forbidden Colors"'' (1988), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles *''"Untitled"'' (1989), Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum, New York City, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum, New York; and Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts *''"Untitled"'' (1989), Art Institute of Chicago, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (jointly owned) *''"Untitled" (The End)'' (1990), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago *''"Untitled"'' (1990), Fonds national d'art contemporain, Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris *''"Untitled" (Death by Gun)'' (1990), Museum of Modern Art, New York *''"Untitled" (Perfect Lovers)'' (1987-1990), Dallas Museum of Art; Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland; and Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut *''"Untitled" (Perfect Lovers)'' (1991), Museum of Modern Art, New York *''"Untitled" (March 5th) #2'' (1991), Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Tate, London; and University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ann Arbor *''"Untitled" (Ross in L.A.)'' (1991), Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. *''"Untitled" (L.A.)'' (1991), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas *''"Untitled" (Implosion)'' (1991), Whitney Museum, New York *''"Untitled" (Go-Go Dancing Platform)'' (1991), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (permanent loan) *''"Untitled" (Double Portrait)'' (1991), Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York, and Tate, London (jointly owned) *''"Untitled" (Public Opinion)'' (1991), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York *''"Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)'' (1991), Art Institute of Chicago *''"Untitled"'' (1991), Museum of Modern Art, New York *''"Untitled" (Petit Palais)'' (1992), Philadelphia Museum of Art *''"Untitled" (For Jeff)'' (1992), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. *''"Untitled" (Republican Years)'' (1992), Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Hanover, Germany *''"Untitled" (For New York)'' (1992), Beyeler Foundation, Riehen, Riehen, Switzerland *''"Untitled" (Placebo - Landscape - for Roni)'' (1993), Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany *''"Untitled" (Last Light)'' (1993), Art Institute of Chicago; Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2 versions); National Museum of Art, Osaka; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis *''"Untitled" (Ischia)'' (1993), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Oslo, Norway *''"Untitled" (Portrait of the Cincinnati Art Museum)'' (1994), Cincinnati Art Museum *''"Untitled" (Golden)'' (1995), Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (jointly owned) *''"Untitled" (Water)'' (1995), Baltimore Museum of Art *''"Untitled"'' (1995), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California; and Des Moines Art Center, Iowa *''"Untitled"'' (1992-1995), Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland

Bibliography

* Ad Reinhardt, Joseph Kosuth, F. Gonzalez-Torres, ''Symptoms of Interference, Conditions of Possibility'', Academy Publishing, 1994 * Susan Cahan, Jan Avgikos, Tim Rollins, ''Felix Gonzalez-Torres'', ''artpress'', 1994 * David Deitcher, ''Felix Gonzalez-Torres'' (Stockholm, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, 1992) * David Deitcher, "Stones Throw" (Secretary Press, 2016). * Amada Cruz et alii, ''Felix Gonzalez-Torres'', Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1994 * Nancy Spector, ''Pour Felix'', Paris Musée, 1996 * Anthony Calnek, ''Felix Gonzalez-Torres'', catalogue d'exposition, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1996 * Julie Ault (ed.), ''Felix Gonzalez-Torres'', Steidl Publishing, 2006 * Francesco Bonami et al.: ''Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rudolf Stingel'', Neue Galerie, Graz 1994 * ''America'', Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern 2007

References

External links

The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation

Documentation of recent Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibitions

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: Felix Gonzalez-Torres Collection Online

at The Renaissance Society, 1994
US Government press release for Venice Biennale 2007

The Museum of Modern Art - Modern Art & Ideas: Art & Identity video featuring Felix Gonzalez-Torres's Untitled (Perfect Lovers)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gonzalez-Torres, Felix 1957 births 1996 deaths Gay artists LGBT people from Cuba Artists from New York (state) Postmodern artists American installation artists American conceptual artists AIDS-related deaths in Florida Cuban contemporary artists Pratt Institute alumni New York University alumni LGBT artists from the United States LGBT Hispanic and Latino American people People from Camagüey Province LGBT photographers 20th-century LGBT people Félix_González-Torres