Specific Objects Without Specific Form, the 2010-2011 retrospective of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ work, curated by Elena Filipovic, was a pivotal influence in the posthumous reconsideration of the artist’s work and legacy. It was co-curated with three artists, Danh Vo, Carol Bove, and Tino Sehgal, in three European museums: WIELS (Brussels), the Fondation Beyeler (Basel), and MMK Frankfurt.
Frequent changes and reinstallations were the default, and each artist brought entirely different concepts for reimagining the work and its history. I would be surprised if a hundred people on earth saw every iteration and variation over the show’s 15-month run, and so the massive catalogue, published in 2016, is the primary vehicle for transmitting the experiments and experience of the exhibition.
The core of the catalogue, at least as it relates to the recontextualization of Gonzalez-Torres’ work, is a 20+ page conversation between Tino Sehgal and dealer Andrea Rosen. Rosen is the single most influential figure in the history of FG-T’s work, and the single biggest reason it’s been preserved, shown, and studied during his life, and after his death. I don’t know of any more extensive discussion of Rosen’s views on Gonzalez-Torres’ work, and the core of her message here is that it is about change.
Though there are some persistent, static objects in Gonzalez-Torres’ body of work, the most significant ones are all recreated every time they’re shown. It is the discussion and decisions that occur around each of these realizations that constitute the history of the work. Those changes, and marking them, and questioning them, and questioning the context a work is presented in each time it is realized, are, Rosen argues, central to Gonzalez-Torres’ original intention for his work.
“He would always say,” Rosen quoted Felix as saying, “‘If someone chooses to never install a work again, or manifest a manifestable work again, it may not physically exist, but it does exist, because it did exist.'” Some of his works have recently been manifest at the National Portrait Gallery, and the changes and decisions around them have prompted criticism. This has happened before, with these same works, with the same institution, even, and with some of the same people—including Rosen—stewarding Gonzalez-Torres’ work. The most public shift and criticism has been specific objections about specific identities: the seeming erasure or diminishment of the artist’s identity as a gay man, a person with AIDS, and a Cuban-American, as generative to his work. It got attention after Rosen brought David Zwirner in to co-represent the artist’s estate. But, as this show, and this book, and this interview, document it’s been underway for much longer.
I’m going to take another look at these contested works, and reread the Rosen/Sehgal interview, and report back. brb
Previously, related: Felix Gonzalez-Torres @ NPG
A 2010 visit to Hide/Seek: ‘It Gets Better’ doesn’t mean the bullying stops