Félix González-Torres

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Lore & Background

González-Torres was trained as a photographer and incorporated that medium in varying ways. He transformed commonplace materials into installations that foster meaningful responses from audiences, with which audiences can choose to physically interact, and that may change each time they are exhibited. He stated, 'the only thing permanent is change,' always questioning the stability of the art object. Throughout his career, he purposefully incorporated dissonant information and formats, structuring courses as a professor, writing press releases, giving lectures, and participating in interviews with varying strategies. In a 1994 lecture at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, he showed slides of his work, then read a statement on the national deficit, government budget allocations for public housing versus military spending, incarceration and poverty rates, and inequitable wealth distribution, closing with a quote from a New York Times article on church-state separation. This methodology was intended to foster individuals' right and responsibility to have their own point of view. González-Torres stated that his work requires an audience, following Bertolt Brecht's theory of Epic Theatre, meaning an audience member is primed to have an individualized response that leads them to effect change in the world. He maintained that his work should always remain open to new and changing interpretations. He died in Miami in 1996 from AIDS-related illness.

Reader's Guide

González-Torres's work has been interpreted through varying critical lenses, including the subjective construction of histories, questions of monumentality and attachment to permanency, the profoundness of love and partnership, codes and resilience of queer love, the role of ownership, perceptions of value and authority, discourse around death, loss, and the potentiality of renewal, questions of display and conditions of reception, notions of disidentification, the role and subversiveness of beauty, the rewards and consequences of generosity, arbitrary delineations between private and public selves/places, social, political, and personal dimensions of the AIDS epidemic, questions of established economic and political structures, occupation of the margins and infiltration of centers of power, the instability of language and what is connoted vs. denoted, and somatic responses/forms of knowledge. At the core of many works is the physical experience and their capacity to be manifest in perpetually changing circumstances. While his work is conceptual, the formal qualities are especially powerful in their ability to elicit individualized emotional responses from each viewer. His practice continues to influence and be influenced by present-day cultural discourses.

Did You Know?

• González-Torres's candy works have an 'ideal weight' that may correlate to an average body weight of an adult male or a combined average body weight of two adult men.
• There are 24 individual light string works; 22 are unique and two are editioned works.
• One of his image transfer works is intended to be permanently tattooed.
• In a 1994 lecture, he read a prepared statement on the national deficit, government budget allocations, incarceration and poverty rates, and inequitable wealth distribution.
• He followed Bertolt Brecht's theory of Epic Theatre, meaning an audience member is primed to have an individualized response that leads them to effect change in the world.