Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled, 1991”

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Felix Gonzalez-Torres was a brilliant, 30-something conceptual artist who had been a part of Group Material, an artists’ collective (1979-1996). I think he was also in ACT UP*1. He had a huge, wonderful retrospective at the Guggenheim. He was also a sexy dog, a handsome fellow, and people just liked being with him. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1996, a year after the Guggenheim show.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was a genius when it came to challenging the visitor to think and to react. One of his iconic works, his foil wrapped candies, “Untitled (USA Today)”, 1990. He was a magician. He would do something as simple and direct as filling the corner of a museum with wrapped candies. That would be the piece.

And the piece would be bewildering. You’d go, ‘What the hell is that all about?’ Kids thought they’d landed in heaven. You were supposed to take the candy.

The works were described as “endlessly replenish-able”. You were encouraged to touch it and deal with it directly. It may not have been conventional, but it was engaging and magical. Any sort of exhibition that breaks the norm of black frames, hung bathtub ring style at 60 inches high and that plays with the metabolism of the museum visit merits attention.

One of the pieces for which he got wide recognition was a billboard project, part of the Museum of Modern Art’s Project Series, in 1992. His images of an empty bed appeared on commercial billboards around the city. What was great about this piece was that as it was situated in the public domain without any explanatory text, everyone who saw it could interpret the piece differently. For me, it was reminiscent of a classic Imogen Cunningham bed picture. There was something incredibly sad about it. The implication to me was that the bed once had but now did not have two people in it. Something had happened. Something was missing, absent. I saw it as a testimonial to his lover, who had died. So you didn’t literally have the information, it was completely melancholic and enigmatic with some sort of lingering emotional impact. You bring all of your life experience to it and wonder what’s with that bed?

The piece was sold to an individual which meant that they could lend over and over again. They owned the intellectual property. Now the Museum of Modern Art owns this work, and the sole ability to reproduce it.. They have printed additional billboards. And if you looked around Manhattan, you could see them once more, engaging people yet again.

Outside the window of the Ricco-Maresca gallery, where I was the Director of Photography, was that billboard. It was visible from the viewing room and whenever I had clients or visitors, I sat them so that they could see it. They always asked what it was. It was about a block away, framed by the slightly grimy window. It was very affecting.

The photograph had a life of its own, again, eight or ten years or so after its creation. I’m sure for others it has new and different meanings. For me, it is still about the same theme: Our palpable sense of loss in dealing with AIDS.

It also existed as a poster sized work on paper meant to be displayed in a neat stack and like the candies meant never to be depleted. With it, he totally upended the museum going experience. A visitor would enter a gallery and their attention might be drawn to a guard talking to some other visitors next to a FG-T stack of paper. There would be some sort of negotiation and the people might reach down and take one or two of the posters, roll them up and tuck them under their arm and walk away.

Imagine being invited to touch the art, and not only that, to take it away! The whole phenomena of spending a couple of seconds looking at a work of art was changed. You had questions, you had to make decisions, you (and the guard) were engaged in an unexpected, revolutionary way.

The experience would appear to continue because you would later see posters crumpled up and thrown away, people deciding they were no longer engaged and did not want to lug the damn thing home.. It was amazing the degree to which the artist insisted the viewer be involved with the process.

The photograph is poignant and well made; the event is the art.

*1 AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, was founded in NYC in 1987 as a political action group in response to the AIDS crisis

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