“Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) is still for sale, I guess, and is now on view at Hauser & Wirth. It’s been on permanent loan to a Swiss museum, and has seemingly been available any time a museum wanted to show it, but there’s still something weird about this work being in a private collection, and being for sale, first in an art fair, and now in a gallery:
“Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) consists of a painted blue platform framed by 48 light bulbs. When the work is installed, a dancer may appear once a day, at unscheduled times—wearing silver lamé and listening to music of their own choosing through headphones—ascending the platform for brief unchoreographed performances in which they are only dancing for themselves. The dancer draws forth surprise, desire and projection.
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As Humberto Moro, Deputy Director of Program at Dia Art Foundation, said in a recent film on the work, ‘It reminds us that beauty can be ephemeral, that performance can be a private act, and that care, like memory, requires effort.
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Over the past three decades, “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) has been realized in numerous institutional contexts, each presentation shaped by its particular time and place, allowing the work to unfold anew with every iteration.
But this is a paradox of Felix’s work: the public aspect feels incompatible with typical ideas of private ownership. Unless you have a steady stream of visitors, a candy pour in your house will go stale or get bugs. Why would you take a sheet from a paper stack if you already have them all? To wrap charcuterie? There is, of course, “Untitled” (1991), a box containing objects Felix sent to a private collector, which is intended never to be exhibited publicly.
But what is the private realization of “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) like? Does it just sit there? If there’s not a dancer coming every day, that just seems wrong. So do you just give a dancer a key to your house, and they show up whenever tf they want for their five minutes? That could be chaotically fantastic, stressful, or awkward. And you better pay them, and give them vacation, and so you need substitute dancers, or a roster. And I assume they’ll need background checks or NDAs. And suddenly you need a dancer manager/producer. But you still need to leave the dancer’s schedule up to them, and the discretion to share it with you. What if they get into a routine, stopping off for a dance on the way to their other dayjob? That also feels wrong somehow.
In the wake of the H&W opening last night, I was texting with a friend, who jokingly asked me my silver hot pants size, and it hit me: what if the owner is the dancer? The core tenet of “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) is that it needs someone in lamé to dance on it for five minutes each day. That’s the owner’s responsibility. You knew that when you bought it. The rest is just execution.
“Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) has been realized in numerous institutional contexts, sure, but performance can be a private act. So imagine it realized in numerous private contexts: is it a ritual? A break? A chore? To you take a go-go break instead of a smoke break? A daily practice of go-go dancing? A quick go-go before going out? Does the whole family take turns? Is go-go dancing on the job wheel on the fridge, along with walking the dog or mowing the lawn? Are you notorious for go-go dancing during dinner parties, or is it a rare treat? Do you take a break when the work’s on loan somewhere, or do you keep it up?
Should “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) be considered alongside other works of daily practice, like On Kawara’s date paintings, or Byron Kim skies, or Rob Pruitt’s sunsets or Obamas? Or should it slot in along the maintenance and labor works of Meyrle Laderman Ukeles? Should the yawning gap between the eight-figure value of the work and the wage value of the dancers’ daily labor be a subject of critical evaluation? Does the owner/dancer change that?
What if the next owner of “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) decides to never loan it again, and just keeps it for themselves? These questions are all we’ll have left. I guess we all better hoof it over to 22nd street while we still have a chance.
[10 minutes later update: of course I know the Foundation’s core tenets for the work (pdf) only say it “may” include a dancer, not that it “must.” It also says “bikini or briefs,” though I think no non-cis male-presenting dancers ever performed in Felix’s lifetime. If the work can accommodate questions of gender, it can certainly withstand scrutiny of the rights (sic) and responsibilities (sic) of its owner, and that person’s relationship to the agency, labor, and body of someone involved in realizing the work.]
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform), 12 Feb — 18 Apr 2026 [hauserwirth]
Previously, related: All in a day’s work
All the other Felix Gonzalez-Torres dancing platforms