Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Felix Gonzalez-Torres habitually conferred an aura of art on the most mundane objects--hard candies, wall clocks, lightbulbs, jigsaw puzzles--and often invited the viewer to activate his art through interaction. Versed in the language of Minimalism and Conceptualism, the artist infused these well-worn ideas with social commentary born of the urgency of living in a time of AIDS. His work--ambiguous, subtle, and highly metaphoric--often broke down the boundaries between "us" and "them." His seemingly banal readymades were democratic in accessibility, leading viewers "through a maze of images that describe a society in crisis" while simultaneously evoking "bittersweet epiphanies of temporary communion and ultimate solitude." For instance, Untitled (Placebo) (1991) consists of a six-by-twelve-foot carpet of shiny silver wrapped candies whose weight totals the combined weights of the artist and his lover, who died of AIDS. Viewers are invited to each take a candy, thus altering the sculpture, and, perhaps, to contemplate or discuss art, loss, memorials, AIDS, and public policy. This exhibition features Untitled (Golden) (1995), a curtain of gold plastic beads dividing one gallery from another. Resembling a wall of golden light, these shimmering, rustling strands invite the viewer to touch and pass through. They transform the architecture of the space and constantly change in shape as each person moves through them. They embody the sensual intensity of Baroque sculpture while also acting as a penetrable boundary between the known and the unknown. Like most of Gonzalez-Torres' work, they manifest a sense of melancholy while offering the spectacle of pleasure and illumination. He often thought of his beaded curtain pieces as alluding to bodily fluids and medications associated with fighting HIV. This piece is an "unsentimental mixture of pure seriality and disturbing content" in the best possible sense.