"Untitled" (1992)

The Photostat series, 1987-1992, can be considered the most seminal to all of Gonzalez-Torres' works. As with the majority of his artwork, they are about meaning and how meaning is dependent on context. Made by a photographic process, the black backgrounds provide the perfect blank screens for the projection of our individual understanding of social and political realities named and dated yet undefined by the text. The Photostats demand audience participation in making sense of the world depicted there. They require that we identify not with the artist or artwork, but as subjects in history through our interaction with the work. The viewer's personal history is linked with the events listed thereby collapsing the private and public, personal and political, individual and collective. This is the last Photostat work made by Gonzalez-Torres.