Gonzales Torres, Felix

Felix Gonzales Torres grew up in Puerto Rico, where he began to study art at the University of Puerto Rico . ^[1] Since 1979, he lived and worked in New York. In 1983, he received a photographer’s diploma from the Pratt Institute . ^[1] In 1986, Gonzales Torres traveled to Europe and studied in Venice. In 1987, he received a Master of Fine Arts from the International Center for Photography and New York University . He taught at New York University and at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

Died of AIDS in Miami , Florida .

Gonzales Torres is one of the founders of the "art of the 1990s" - the art of direct action and open communication with the audience, as opposed to a respectable, stable, closed art object. Known for his minimalist installations and sculptures, in which he used materials such as strings, light bulbs, watches, piles of paper, sweets (lollipops). The artist's early works were puzzles made industrially based on photographs taken from the press - “Untitled” (Klaus Barbie as a family man) . 1988. The first sculptures - in the form of piles of almost empty white sheets of paper (they only have an inscription). The piles in their form indicated the burial steles in the cemeteries of veterans - “Untitled” (Memorial) . 1989.

Gonzales-Torres works are minimalist sculptures - abstract, geometric, cold.

For example, neat stacks of sheets of paper with texts and photos that viewers are invited to take with them. But as such posters are exhausted, the museum, which bought such work, takes on an eternal obligation to print it as the reserve is exhausted. This violates the economy itself and at the same time the ideology of contemporary art, the art of unique objects and a limited edition.

Or, “ Untitled” (Placebo. 1991) - lollipops wrapped in silver foil cover the floor with a regular rectangle. The total weight of the candies was the body weight of the beloved artist who died of AIDS. The sweetness of sweets in this context became provocative both in a sexual and religious sense. After all, viewers are invited to taste the "body of the dead" until the entire supply is exhausted and the rectangle disappears. After that, according to the artist’s plan, the museum pours a new portion, lays out a new square, and the process begins again.

“ Untitled ” (1991) - 24 billboards were posted in Manhattan with photographs of the dismantled bed, which still contains traces of two bodies. This stinging symbol of loss and disappearance simultaneously violated the boundaries between public and private. Pictures have become the subject of legal proceedings.

“Untitled” (Ideal Lovers . 1987-1990) - the most famous work that is included in all textbooks. The installation consists of two identical wall clocks hanging in a row, which go in unison.

The first solo exhibition of the artist was presented in New York in 1984 . Gonzales Torres has made several important exhibitions at the Andrea Rosen Gallery and the Hirchhorn Museum. A year before his death, he did a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum . After his death, there were several retrospective shows in MoMA and other museums. In 1997, his earlier project for the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale was realized, and this was the artist’s most successful posthumous exhibition.

• Felix Gonzales Torres and his ten “gifts”
• Sergey Shabohin. Art and Time, Part 2