“Untitled” (Beginning), 1994

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Exhibition: Jan 15 – May 17, 2015


This exhibition is generously supported by Eileen Harris Norton.

This twentieth anniversary presentation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (Beginning) brings back a work created and exhibited by the artist during his 1995 Artpace residency. Chosen by guest curator Robert Storr, Gonzalez-Torres was the first US-based artist invited for Artpace’s inaugural International Artist-in-Residence program.

Gonzalez-Torres (born in Cuba,1957; died in Miami,1996) was raised in Puerto Rico and moved to New York in 1979, where he settled. In his work he used simple materials, including stacks of paper, piles of wrapped candy, strings of lights, beaded curtains, and billboards to evoke often complex political notions. Working as a gay man within the context of the rise of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Gonzalez-Torres addressed issues around the body, desire, love, and loss in minimally elegant installations that only hinted at specific meanings. He allowed viewers to interact with his work by encouraging them to take sheets from his stacked paper pieces and eat sweets from his candy piles. The presenter of these works has to replenish each one according to his specifications. These works can be seen as metaphors for the body and its regeneration.

In 1991, Gonzalez-Torres produced the first of a series of five beaded curtains. “Untitled” (Beginning) hangs from the ceiling and spans the Window Works gallery, acting as a membrane and a site of passage that beckons viewers to walk through it; the strands caress their bodies as the curtain parts. The colorful beads are at once celebratory and evocative of organic substances.

Gonzalez-Torres’ work was exhibited in major museums and galleries across this country and in Europe. In 1994, a solo exhibition was collaboratively organized by and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. A major survey of his work was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in February 1995. In 2010 to celebrate Artpace’s fifteenth anniversary, Artpace presented a year-long statewide exhibition of Gonzalez-Torres’ billboards, and the catalogue for this exhibition will be published in early 2015.

Untitled (Beginning)

Artist

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

New York, New York, USA

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) lived and worked in New York City. His bibliography lists shows in major museums and galleries across this country and in Europe, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Renaissance Society in Chicago. A major survey of his work was held at the Guggenheim Museum in February 1995, curated by Nancy Spector.
Gonzalez-Torres is known for his use of simple materials to express often complex, even conflicting notions. His medium is paper, pieces of wrapped candy, a string of lights, or a beaded curtain. The environment for his work can be the cityscape surrounding one of his billboards – this is his “outdoor art,” he specifies, not public art. “Just because it’s out on the street doesn’t make it public.” Or his audience may be the individual collector who purchases an empty box on the promise that the artist will fill it – over time – with objects. Gonzalez-Torres’ work is exhibited in museums and art galleries, reaching the usual audience through unusual means. He arranged stacks of paper, sheets of which were available to anyone who wanted to take them. The unlimited edition of paper was then replenished from time to time, maintaining the work within the artist’s required parameters. The artist said, “I want my artwork to look like something else, non-artistic yet beautifully simple.”
According to Simon Watney, London-based critic and writer:
Gonzalez-Torres finds and mobilizes materials which may function as analogies for experience and emotions which are not “explained” in any extended biographical supplementary exegesis. They are works about love, desire, loss, death, and mourning… They encourage us to make as many associative connections as we like in relation to the materials assembled before us, as well as in relation to previous work.
The possibilities seem endless. The artist’s work reflects sensitivity to his Hispanic roots, but does not conform to a predetermined cultural persona or preoccupation; his work confronts issues related to his gay identity through elegant metaphor.

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