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拍品專文
"Untitled", by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, is a representation of the artist's nostalgia for and memories of companionship, tenderness, and a sense of togetherness. To create this unique, intriguing object, Gonzalez-Torres made a puzzle out of a photograph of adolescent boys in army fatigues casually posing for a snapshot held together by a clear plastic bag. One of a small series of puzzles, this photograph was interspersed with both reconstituted family photographs as well as others sourced from mass media imagery, adding innovative depth to an already moving piece with this ongoing conversation between private revelation and social commentary. The pieces of the puzzle have come together tentatively, reuniting to create a unified image that's rife with ephemerality and fragility--its plastic wrap could collapse at any moment, shattering the puzzle thereby rending the represented memory, thought, or day-dream from the eye of the beholder.
Throughout his oeuvre, Gonzalez-Torres gives the most ubiquitous of materials, such as light bulbs, candy, puzzles, and billboards, a poetry that he uses to convey both the ultimate value of the life as well as its inherent transience. Gonzalez-Torres produced the majority of his pieces through the late 1980s and early 1990s, during which time the creative industry of New York City was haunted by the AIDS epidemic. Much of Gonzalez-Torres's work quietly speaks to his own personal sense of loss, using metaphorical images, usually unaccompanied by explanatory text, to express the deaths of those around him. His works are beautiful, brilliant, and extraordinarily poignant.
As is typical of Gonzalez-Torres, no explanation is given for the underlying meaning of "Untitled"'s image. The quotation marks used to set apart "Untitled" are the product of the artist's conscious utilization of specific syntax to indicate the importance placed on the works's opennes for interpretation. There is no literal connection of language to the piece, thereby leaving completely flexible the viewer's personal reading of the works's inner meaning. Instead we are left to wonder what exactly the grouping of boys represents. Are they a memento to the briefly happy, friend-filled moments of a childhood marked by displacement, or instead perhaps a testament to lost romantic love? This vagueness, particularly as it connotes a discrepancy between heterosexual and homosexual love, contributes to an underlying political reference in the piece, perhaps referencing the issue of gay men serving in the military. Relocated from his childhood home in Cuba, as were many of his fellow Cuban children, at the age of nine, Gonzalez-Torres was sent to live in Spain and then Puerto Rico. The image captured in "Untitled" could also then be seen as voicing a longing for better, more fulfilling memories of a stolen childhood.
Throughout his oeuvre, Gonzalez-Torres gives the most ubiquitous of materials, such as light bulbs, candy, puzzles, and billboards, a poetry that he uses to convey both the ultimate value of the life as well as its inherent transience. Gonzalez-Torres produced the majority of his pieces through the late 1980s and early 1990s, during which time the creative industry of New York City was haunted by the AIDS epidemic. Much of Gonzalez-Torres's work quietly speaks to his own personal sense of loss, using metaphorical images, usually unaccompanied by explanatory text, to express the deaths of those around him. His works are beautiful, brilliant, and extraordinarily poignant.
As is typical of Gonzalez-Torres, no explanation is given for the underlying meaning of "Untitled"'s image. The quotation marks used to set apart "Untitled" are the product of the artist's conscious utilization of specific syntax to indicate the importance placed on the works's opennes for interpretation. There is no literal connection of language to the piece, thereby leaving completely flexible the viewer's personal reading of the works's inner meaning. Instead we are left to wonder what exactly the grouping of boys represents. Are they a memento to the briefly happy, friend-filled moments of a childhood marked by displacement, or instead perhaps a testament to lost romantic love? This vagueness, particularly as it connotes a discrepancy between heterosexual and homosexual love, contributes to an underlying political reference in the piece, perhaps referencing the issue of gay men serving in the military. Relocated from his childhood home in Cuba, as were many of his fellow Cuban children, at the age of nine, Gonzalez-Torres was sent to live in Spain and then Puerto Rico. The image captured in "Untitled" could also then be seen as voicing a longing for better, more fulfilling memories of a stolen childhood.