Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Summer

Summer

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

March 9 to July 31, 2022

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was an artist, educator, writer, and activist. His practice evolved during the transition from the 1980s to the ‘90s, a period remembered for the emergence of the HIV/AIDS health crisis and changing attitudes towards government inaction, medicine, wealth and racial inequalities, war, the urgency of the climate crisis, burgeoning expressions of gender and sexuality, and the fight for freedom of speech and assembly. In just under a decade, before his death from AIDS-related causes, Gonzalez-Torres developed an expansive and influential body of work that brought him and audiences closer to an understanding of the fragility and complexity of being alive. In one moment, everything can be taken away. In another, everything can be restored.

Many of Gonzalez-Torres’s artworks take the form of mass-produced items—light strings, piles of candy, beaded curtains, stacks of paper, and signage—that can be locally sourced and adapted to any location. By choosing processes that removed his hand, Gonzalez-Torres ensured that the core of his work was stable enough to be sustained by and benefit from ongoing transformation. While the artworks are almost always designated “Untitled,” many of the titles also include parentheticals, imbuing the captions with opportunities for individual reflection. Even during his lifetime, Gonzalez-Torres chose to impart the rights and responsibilities of making decisions about his artwork to owners, authorized exhibitors, and the public, ensuring that each artwork’s significance varies with time, composition, geography, and experience.

This curated arrangement of artworks, titled Summer, establishes local resonances and generates new reflections on our relationship to the landscape, what the artist once alluded to as being not only the natural environment but also our “cultural concerns, political realities, and civic issues.” It embraces the spirit of transformation, the beauty and disquiet of being in one set of circumstances while longing for others. As the seasons change in Toronto, so too will the exhibition. When daylight extends and temperatures rise, the artworks will morph and migrate to new locations in the museum; consequently, the exhibition title will shift from Summer to Winter

This project is curated by MOCA adjunct curator Rui Mateus Amaral. Summer is Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s first solo exhibition in Canada.

A core aspect of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work is that new meaning can be created through grappling with contradiction and subtlety. The information presented here serves as a guidebook to the exhibition and moves between contractual terms, research, speculation, and intuition. Like the artworks themselves, these references do not always fit together neatly; instead, they deliberately suggest the varied ways one can approach the artworks.

“Untitled” (North), 1993

Light bulbs, porcelain sockets, and electrical cords, twelve parts Overall dimensions vary with installation

Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

Between 1992 and 1994, Felix Gonzalez-Torres conceived of twenty-four light-string works, many of which are identical and simultaneously distinct. “Untitled” (North) has the potential to be one of the largest, involving twelve elements. As it happens, there are twelve hours on a clock and twelve months in a year. Just as time moves differently for everyone, the artwork’s possibilities are elastic: the twelve elements do not have to be shown together, nor do they have to be presented the same way each time the work is installed. The bulbs can be turned on or off completely, but not a combination of both. Much like dressing a space for an occasion or adding light to a dim scene, the light strings may be displayed in any manner that suits the room and one’s intention. This intrinsic flexibility continuously situates the work in the present.

Since the onset of lockdowns, outdoor-light sales have soared in North America. Early on, news outlets revealed that several communities reinstalled their holiday décor to counter the gloom of isolation. Today, manufacturers report holiday lights are appearing as soon as Halloween and disappearing as late as April, prolonging the optimism that festive ornaments exude. Psychiatrists are connecting this trend to the importance of cultural rituals that provide people with stability and positive beliefs. On their newfound urgency, one professor adds, “Rituals are things that outlive our mortality, they outlive sickness and death.” If a bulb in this artwork burns out, it gets immediately replaced with another. Carrying out the installation and maintenance of “Untitled” (North) points us to continuity and the traditions of people across time and cultures who turn to the stars, sun, moon, and fire for navigation and energy.

On January 24, 1991, the artist’s partner, Ross Laycock, died in Toronto of AIDS-related complications. Throughout their relationship, Gonzalez-Torres flew north to Toronto to visit him—they shared a life in Roncesvalles. Personal ephemera and oral history show they explored Canada’s vast, rich, and harsh landscape. Flowers, canoes, cabins, animals, lakes, skies, and snow are present across his work. Such images have long circulated as commercial and promotional materials, representing the delicately held belief that north is where freedom, opportunity, and harmony live. When “Untitled” (North) was first exhibited it was contextualized by the curator as having associations with the awe-inspiring Northern Lights. Apart from being a natural phenomenon, the sweeping lights are spiritually charged; according to some Indigenous teachings— which vary by nation and place—they are interpreted as the dancing spirits of ancestors celebrating life. Taken together, these thoughts make way for “Untitled” (North) to be discovered as a space and process of observance, where ideals are momentarily held aloft and where life is honoured and continuously unfolding.

“Untitled” (Public Opinion), 1991

Black rod Iicorice candies in clear wrappers, endless supply

Dimensions variable, ideal weight: 700 lb, (317.5 kg)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by Louis and Bessie Adler Foundation, Inc., and the National Endowment for the Arts Museum Purchase Program, 91.3969

Laid out before the viewer is a mass of black liquorice. Each piece is rod-shaped and individually wrapped in cellophane. Gonzalez-Torres specified an “ideal weight” of candy to be considered throughout the exhibition. Essential to the work is the viewer’s right to choose to take one or more candies with them, causing the artwork’s weight and shape to adjust over time. The ideal weights of Gonzalez-Torres’s candy works range from forty-two to twelve-hundred pounds. How the artist arrived at these amounts is unspecified, though his reasoning purposefully varied from piece to piece. For certain candy works, the ideal weights have been related to individual or combined body weights. The fluctuating size of the installations may draw an association with the body’s response to external forces, such as the influences of others, viruses and treatments. While the ideal weight establishes a potential starting point, the candies are in “endless supply.” As the mass of candy diminishes, an individual tasked with caring for the work may decide to replenish it periodically, renewing its form.

“Untitled” (Public Opinion) can be displayed in countless ways. Here, the candies are deposited on the floor, setting up the work so that its monochromatic aesthetic is emphasized. Observing this consistency can be linked to the artwork’s interpretation: after all, “Public Opinion” denotes a prevalent thought. With its spread of confections that may be consumed slowly and possibly restocked often, the sculpture’s variability exposes how public opinion is shaped by manipulation and consumption, how an ideology can seem abandoned and then reinstated.

Structured with distinct borders, this installation of the work initially offers images of a patch of night, a bed of soil, an unrolled blanket. As the edges soften through the ebb and flow of taken candy, a body of water may come into view. The work’s twinkling and rippling surface, as historian Deborah Cherry comments, tenders “the presence of the sea, sea crossings, and migrations”—sometimes rough, sometimes still.

“Untitled”, 1989

Paint on wall

Dimensions vary with installation

The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Carolyn Spiegel; Watson F. Blair Prize, Muriel Kallis Newman, Sara Szold and Modern and Contemporary Discretionary funds; Samuel and Sarah Deson and Oscar L. Gerber Memorial endowments; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund

Purchase: gift of Jean and James E. Douglas Jr., Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein, Collectors Forum, Doris and Don Fisher, Niko and Steve Mayer, Elaine McKeon, and Danielle and Brooks Walker Jr., 2002.80

Just below the ceiling is a self-portrait by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. The artwork is a list of names, events, locations, titles, products, and corresponding dates that form a frieze along three of the museum’s adjoining walls. Continuous, evenly spaced, and handapplied, the artist’s portrait leaves the impressions of a receipt, bibliography, résumé, or passport.

Essential to the work is the invitation extended to the owner and/or borrower to rearrange, add, or withdraw information from the portrait, rewriting history each time it’s installed. The owner may also elect not to offer this opportunity to a borrower. The work was presented for the second time in 1990 at the University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery in an exhibition curated by Scott Watson. At that moment, the portrait consisted of six entries. In a later exhibition, there were sixty-seven. Later still, there were thirty-three. An avid newspaper reader and trained photographer, Gonzalez-Torres reaches for the caption rather than the selfie. His portrait—an evolving series of world events fused with personal memories, presented out of chronological order—expresses a self that is unpictureable and therefore questionable, infinite, and common. The portrait that surfaces is whatever the mind travels to upon reading.

Curator Nancy Spector reflected on the artist’s relationship to monuments, of which pictures, statues, and architecture are examples. She writes, “Gonzalez-Torres recounts seeing a different kind [of monument] while traveling in Canada: on the side of a road overlooking a spectacular landscape was a simple plaque on a very small pedestal that read, ‘This view is dedicated to all those who died in World War II.’ ‘Do we really need a monument better than that?’ he asks rhetorically.” Did this encounter further open up the field of portraiture for Gonzalez-Torres? Was it in this view that he saw a new way to engage the unreliability of images and the mutability of meaning? In any event, Spector’s memory communicates his growing sensitivity toward nature’s mystery. And how commentary, when applied publicly to fluctuating subjects like an environment or a person, can reconfigure those subjects into potent representations.

“Untitled” (Shield), 1990

C-print on jigsaw puzzle in plastic bag

7.5 × 9.5 inches

Edition of 3, 1 AP

Heithoff Family Collection

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was a collector of figurines, plush animals, trinkets, eccentric furniture, and props. This stuff filled the artist’s apartment in New York and the house he shared with Ross Laycock in Toronto, which he called “Pee-wee Herman’s Playhouse” after the fun-loving TV character’s place that overflowed with talking toys and gadgets. Materially, his puzzle artworks are closest to tsotchkes and mementos. Their photographic imagery is drawn from the artist’s newspaper clippings, snapshots, postcards, and handwritten notes. Decentering his presence, Gonzalez-Torres translated this imagery into a popular pastime, demonstrating his attraction to commercial items and his engagement with readily customizable products.

The puzzles are humble: small, low-cost, printed like a personalized t-shirt or mug, and delicately pinned to the wall. Yet this is the body of work the artist immersed himself in the longest (1987–92) and is the largest of his output (fifty-five works). In their expansiveness and diversity, they posit another kind of self-portrait.The puzzles are also notable for their standard packaging: their pieces are held together as a complete picture; they store, travel, and are displayed fully assembled in a basic plastic bag. In contrast to the candy works, the puzzles are static.

That the pictured subject is defending himself against exposure to something is uncanny; he, too, is protected by a material at hand (a not-so-tough teddy bear) from the forces that threaten to unmake him. But the lesion on his left forearm hints that he has already been struck, hence the photographic impulse to immortalize him with a camera. Also visible in the photograph is the subject’s ring—a symbol of commitment, accomplishment, memory, and mystic power. Rings get presented and bequeathed to loved ones everyday; sometimes they’re pawned for other currencies. Gonzalez-Torres likely noted this detail, too.

Without seeing its history, “Untitled” (Shield) appears to be a valuable personal object. Not merely because it is displayed here in a museum, but because of the protective layers–physical and metaphorical–in and around it: the teddy bear, photograph, and plastic cover. Choosing to keep the puzzle in its packaging, Gonzalez-Torres ensured it would remain intact as it changes hands and accrues meaning.

“Untitled” (Golden), 1995

Strands of beads and hanging device

Dimensions vary with installation

The Art Institute of Chicago, through prior gift of Adeline Yates; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, through prior gifts of J.D. Zellerbach, Gardner Dailey, and an anonymous donor; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, through prior gift of Solomon R. Guggenheim; partial gift of Andrea Rosen in honor of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 2008.400

Every time “Untitled” (Golden) is installed, it must span a location through which people naturally pass. This prompts a different type of engagement, where viewers are compelled to cross a threshold, to gently brush against the artwork, in order to experience the beaded curtain, as well as the exhibition, from another side. Beyond a channel or boundary within the exhibition space, “Untitled” (Golden) is imagined as a filter, a stretch of light that shimmers and alters one’s perception. Formally, this installation is intended to evoke the glow and warmth of summer or that “magic hour,” the brief moment before sunset and after sunrise, that photographers savour. The artist once described a spread of gold as holding the potential to establish a place, “a new horizon.”

Strung together and suspended, the gold beads are commemorative and charming. They inspire images of the metallic foil fringes that outfit birthdays and anniversaries. One might also be reminded of nights out on the dance floor. This exhibition celebrates these qualities and recognizes their fleeting nature. The title uses “golden” and not “gold,” insinuating the beaded curtain is a passing state as well as being a passageway. What appears golden can be alienating and illusory, too—the term is often applied to influential figures, principles, ratios, and time periods, describing them as favourable or exalted. Still, “Untitled” (Golden) is a curtain made of inexpensive mass-produced beads, a material bought to make a necklace or conveniently erect a screen. It’s something that one puts on to emphasize one thing and hide another.

In connection to hiding, “Untitled” (Golden) safeguards the intimately scaled puzzle nearby. By placing the curtain in view of the museum’s east-facing windows, it also helps preserve the puzzle’s photographic imagery against fading by dispersing the incoming daylight.

Beyond crossing and beholding this artwork, viewers are welcome to photograph it and share their experiences on social media. Which of Instagram’s filters will one select to enhance the picture: Los Angeles, New York, Lagos, or Rio? Or perhaps one swipes through all the offerings only to post the image as it appears right now in this light, a filter Instagram calls “Normal” but is known to us as Toronto.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was born in Guáimaro, Cuba, in 1957. He studied at the University of Puerto Rico before earning a BFA in photography from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and later an MFA from the International Center of Photography and New York University. He also attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. For a time he taught at New York University as well as California Institute of the Arts. Apart from his individual practice, Gonzalez-Torres was part of Group Material, a New York-based art collective whose community engagement and exhibition practices advanced art as a social and political tool.

Gonzalez-Torres’s work was included in numerous group shows during his lifetime, including early presentations at Artists Space, White Columns, and the Whitney Biennial (New York), The Venice Biennale, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (Berlin), and Sammlung Goetz (Munich). Comprehensive exhibitions of his work have been organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Sprengel Museum (Hannover), and Biblioteca Luis-Angel Arango (Bogotá). Further solo presentations have been held at El Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (Uruguay), Serpentine Gallery (London), Le Consortium (France), Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart (Berlin).

A survey of his work, Specific Objects without Specific Form, was organized by WIELS, Centre d’Art Contemporain (Brussels) and then traveled to the Fondation Beyeler (Basel), and the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main). More recently, Gonzalez-Torres’s work has appeared in solo exhibitions at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (Seoul), Metropolitan Arts Centre (Belfast), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai) and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.

Gonzalez-Torres was selected to represent the United States at the 52nd Venice Biennale in the exhibition Felix Gonzalez-Torres: America. The artist died in Miami in 1996.

This exhibition would not be possible without the support, insights and generosity of the following individuals and organizations:

Julie Ault

Stephen Andrews

Joe Clark

Andy Fabo

Carl George

Sophie Hackett, Art Gallery of Ontario

Katrina Harple

Andrew Kachel, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation

Emilie Keldie, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation

Janice Laycock

Holly McHugh, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation

Trina Moyan

Andrea Rosen, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation

Brian Sholis

Adelina Vlas

Lenders to the Exhibition

Art Institute of Chicago

Heithoff Family Collection

Hessel Museum of Art, CCS, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Supporters of the Exhibition

Maxine Granovsky and Ira Gluskin in memory of Tom Bjarnason

Liza Mauer and Andrew Sheiner

Bruce Munro Wright

Robin Anthony

Pamela Meredith