West Flanders furniture dealer Roger Vanthournout and his wife Josette collected art for over six decades. Did they see Michael Jenkins and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ show at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels in 1991? Is that what got them interested in Jenkins’ work, leading them to buy two large works on paper at Galerie Hans Mayer in Dusseldorf in 1992? Roger died in 2005, and Josette died last year, so we can’t ask them.
But we can sure look at Jenkins’ work in unexpectedly fascinating relation to Gonzalez-Torres’s. These two works, Counting (L) and Thirteen Lights (R), are flashe and pencil on paper. They also appear to be collage, not trompe l’oeil; so the drawings on paper that look taped on are taped on. And the drawings are of thirteen light bulbs on a string.
Felix made a stack with Jenkins in 1990. His portrait of Jenkins was in 1991. Both artists made works with bondage gear, and Felix made the go-go dancing platform—with 13 lights along each edge—in 1991. Then 1992 was full of light strings, with either 24 or 42 bulbs. The motif cannot be a coincidence. Whether there was a conversation about or between these two artist-friends’ works, there was certainly a shared context. Unlike Felix’s work, though, Jenkins’ has almost never been seen or shown or discussed beyond the moment of its making, during the AIDS crisis and queer resistance.
The most extensive text on Jenkins’ practice, I think, is his Summer 1992 Bomb interview with Bill Arning. He doesn’t mention anything directly related to these works, except for yellow, a color used for its nautical references to quarantine and disease. [I just read a quote from Victor Klemperer, too, about the horror of being forced to wear the six-pointed star in Germany; he mentioned yellow’s historic association with the plague and fear of Jews.]
Felix and the Vanthournouts are gone, but maybe it’s time to ask Jenkins.
[next morning update]
It’s a mixture of gratitude to Michael Seiwert for posting the Artforum review of Jenkins’ 1991 show at Jay Gorney, and sadness at my having not thought about Artforum when writing this post. On the bright side, Contemporary Art Library recently posted an archive of Gorney’s shows, including Jenkins. Incredible. Two things pertain to the drawings at hand: Jenkins was in portrait mode. All the drawings in 1991 were this 60×36 human/door/window scale. The counting is in NYC, too, in one drawing, but the counting is different, continuous, where the drawing above seems to record multiple counts. There’s the trace of human experience without an indication what’s being tallied or why.
The yellow stripes appear in one drawing, and inside this sculpture, Tower with Crazee Windows, 1991. Beautiful photos everywhere, though the yellow does start to feel immediately overwhelming. Maybe Jenkins thought so, too. The two 1993 works he showed next were red and white.
Lot 1286, ending 12 Mar 2026, Michael Jenkins, Thirteen Lights, 1992, EUR500-700
Lot 1288, ending 12 Mar 2026, Michael Jenkins, Counting, 1992, EUR500-700 [christies]