Tobias Wong, Bulletproof Quilted Duvet, 2004, ballistic nylon, cotton, 86 x 86 in., collection SFMOMA via Dwell
Seeing an uncredited version of Tobias Wong’s Just Another Rich Kid Cokespoon #2 on social media this morning hit a bit harder than I expected. I’d forgotten that Henry Urbach shopped a bunch of Tobi’s work for SFMOMA from CITIZEN Citizen [whose online store looks like it’s been zombified by comment spam and turned into a crpyto/cas1no spam factory; our online world is not aging well.]
Vija Celmins, Untitled (Saturn), 1985, mezzotint, 11 x 9 1/4 in., ed. 150, collection Whitney Museum; Untitled (Saturn), 1985 “offset lithograph from a unique mezzotint”? ed. 50, via Phillips
In 1657, two years after discovering Saturn’s moon Titan and accurately characterizing the planet’s rings, the Dutch mathematical physicist Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock, which was an order of magnitude more accurate than previous clock mechanisms.
Huygens spent several years experimenting with pairs of clocks as part of a pan-European attempt to calculate longitude at sea. In a 1665 letter at The Royal Society about their onboard tests of his reinforced maritime pendulum clocks, Huygens reported “an odd kind of sympathy perceived by him in these watches [two maritime clocks] suspended by the side of each other.”
Tobias Wong, Glass Chairs Nos. 2 & 1, 2002, exhibition copies, Low-iron glass, UV glue, installed at Museum of Vancouver in 2022-23. image: MOV
This morning on the good social media, Kevin Buist mentioned that the Museum of Vancouver had a Tobias Wong exhibition last year. All We Want Is More ran from November 2022 thru July 2023. Obviously, I missed it, but there is a virtual tour, and I had to stop and post this, because the first thing you see is Glass Chairs Nos. 1 and 2 in a plexiglass box.
The wall text notes that Wong’s appropriations of other people’s works—in this case, Donald Judd’s 84 chairs—”were not always welcomed or understood and provoked heated conversations about notions of authorship.” Also, because he “had always found Judd’s chairs uncomfortable,” Wong made his chairs “slightly higher.”
The label for the chairs reads: “Initially prototyped in 2002 for the now defunct, New York-based T for Troy [sic?], in 2004 Glass Chairs nos. 1 and 2 went into production with Twentieth, a high-end design store based in Los Angeles. Twentieth granted MOV a one-time license to reproduce the chairs using Wong’s design specifications. “
This is an unusual piece of information for a wall text, but they also have a making-of video that shouts out the mount maker, so maybe that’s just how MOV rolls. What’s important is, rather than borrow some, someone at MOV just ordered some glass and glued these chairs together.
Tobias Wong Glass Chair No. 2, I think, produced by Twentieth and sold by LA Modern in 2023
Not to provoke heated conversations about notions of authorship, but Judd’s chairs are 30 x 15 x 15 inches, and Wong’s chairs are 31 1/2 inches tall and 16 inches wide, and the glass is 3/4-inch thick. Which means if the seat is 16 inches square, the shelf underneath—the chair with the shelf is No. 2—is 16W x 15 1/4 D. Whether there is two pieces on the side [No. 1] or one piece on the front [No. 2], the other vertical glass pieces are 19 x 16 inches, and they are set under the seat.
Here is an 8-minute YouTube video on how to make a glass display case with the Bohle UV bonding system. It looks just like the chair! Why not try it at home today?
I think the first place Tobias Wong’s Glass Chairs were available was in 2002 at Troy. The SoHo design store commissioned Wong to make a holiday collection. I love them, they’re like Judd chairs for ghosts.
Tobi was always getting in trouble for his knockoffs and reworkings, but more than 20 years later, and 13 years after his death, these chairs are actually still available. So I guess the ghost of Judd doesn’t mind. [Troy was literally across the street from Peter Ballantine’s place, the guy who made Judd’s plywood pieces—but not the chairs.]
At Troy they were sold as a pair, as Chair No. 1 and No. 2, but the picture from the NY Times, and the one on Twentieth, the LA design shop who sold this one, are flipped. So if you want to complete the set, be sure to confirm which $9000 chair you’re ordering.
“It’s like living art history while trying to study it,” I wrote in 2021. Today I’d say clocks keep ticking, in sync or gradually not, but understanding comes in quick bursts, sometimes in the comments on Instagram.
White Columns director Matthew Higgs’ Valentine’s Day post was of the original 1988 checklist entry for Félix Gonzalez-Torres’ work, “Perfect Lovers,” which consisted of two 9.75-inch diameter quartz clocks installed next to each other over the desk:
🕙 🕙🤍🤍 In October 1988 Félix Gonzalez-Torres presented “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) at White Columns in the three-artist exhibition ‘Real World’ with Lorna Simpson and Jon Tower. This is the entry from the checklist, which lists the work as “Perfect Lovers”, 1984, 1987. Edition of 3, and priced at $350.00 (The work didn’t sell.) The work was installed behind the gallery’s reception desk. This was, I believe, the first public presentation of the work, and the checklist is the only time I have seen it dated this way, ie. “1984/ 1987.” (The Wikipedia entry for the work lists its dates as 1987-1990, and suggests it was first shown at Jay Gorney’s gallery in 1990.) 🕙 🕙🤍🤍 #perfectlovers @felixgonzaleztorres.foundation @white_columns @davidzwirner @andrearosengal @jaygorney1 #valentinesday
I responded that the catalogue raisonné did list White Columns’ 1988 show as the first exhibition of “Untitled” Perfect Lovers [cat. 108], with a date of 1987-1990. But that an in-process page of the Foundation’s website says that work was a separate work—now not classified as work—titled “Perfect Lovers,” with the dates 1984/1987. [The CR lists “Perfect Lovers” as A25, with a date of 1987.]
Then who weighs in on Higgs’ post but Bill Arning, who was the director of White Columns at the time, who curated the show—and who typed the checklist:
The work was not planned to be in the show at all during our studio visits but right before we were done installing Félix walked in with a bag, and he had bought the two clocks on his way that morning. They were not fancy clocks at all, little plastic things, and FGT asked if he could hang them over my desk and he did, and then explained the concept of the piece to me so I added them to the checklist. it is always shocking how casual grand moments in art history actually are when you[‘re] living through them.
“Any recollection of how the date 1984 came about? Was this an idea he’d had at the time or for a while?” I asked.
“I know he specified it but I don’t remember the argument—working with him require a belief that he knew what he was doing,” Bill replied.
Indeed it does. Indeed it does. So while we don’t know why the date 1984 is attached, we know Félix knew. Which is something. Knowing that he lived and loved with an awareness of time, of sharing it, of conquering it, of marking it.
Lovers, 1988, a note written to Ross Laycock, who Félix met in 1983.
The CR listed “Perfect Lovers,” as “signed, titled, dated, and numbered 1/3” on the back of each clock, and in the collection of Jorge Collazo. Perhaps this is the source of the 1984 date. These don’t sound like the same clocks Félix pulled out of a bag on the way to White Columns, and which are still there somewhere, at least through 2009. So now we can assume there is another (pair).
“Untitled” (Jorge), 1992, c-print, 75×100 cm, Collection Goetz via FG-T Foundation
Collazo is mentioned several times in Félix’s oeuvre, as the owner of images used in billboards, and presumably as the Jorge in letters turned into puzzles and photographs. And the the artist’s published bio, “1991 Jorge stopped talking to me, I’m lost—Claudio and Miami Beach saved me.” and on the back of a puzzle given to another friend, “Sunlight over the water in between Key West & Miami – trip with Jorge,” which the artist also used for a photo work, “Untitled” (Jorge), 1992. Who another friend Jim Hodges described, in his 2009 artist statement at the FLAG Foundation, as “a missing friend who was often mentioned.”
Maybe an answer is there. With Jorge, or on the backs of his clocks. It all really makes me want to sit people down and ask them questions, and record their memories, and their experiences, while there’s still time.
I only met Tobias Wong a couple of times, but it took me aback to see so many people I do know were described or quoted in Alex Williams’ NY Times piece as Tobi’s friends.
Tobi liked to give other artists’ and designers’ work a sardonic or critical twist. But the first photo in the Times’ slideshow featured a work that was different, an idealistic, almost geekily romantic “fix” of an iconic Félix Gonzalez-Torres sculpture. Perfect Lovers [actually, Perfect Lovers (Forever) (2002)] is a remake of Félix’s “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), 1991, a pair of identical, white wall clocks which begin in sync, but which invariably diverge over time.
For his new and improved version, Tobi attached a radio receiver to each clock that syncs it with the official US Atomic Clock. They’ll stay in sync within a second over a million years.
Félix made at least six of his pairs of clocks, which, if they weren’t exactly self-portraits, referred to him and his partner Ross Laycock. Tobias’s references the white version [on a wall painted light blue], which is now in MoMA’s collection, dates from right before Ross’s death, and is listed in Félix’s catalogue as unique.
Before that, in 1990, Félix made “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) with black clocks in an edition of three. The date given for those works is 1987-1990, which is probably to account for the existence of earlier work.
White Columns has a pair of white clocks hanging behind the desk, officially undocumented, it seems, which were included in a 1988 exhibition as coming from an edition of three.
And at the time of Félix’s death, a 1987 work [officially listed as “additional material,” not work] titled Perfect Lovers, was in the collection of his former partner Jorge Collazo. It consists of a pair of wall clocks, signed, titled, and numbered, “1/3”.
Knowing that Félix made Perfect Lover clocks for all his boyfriends [sic] throws a layer of complexity onto the typically poignant interpretation of the work: yes, they’re identical and in sync (for now), but they’re also mass produced. And replaceable. You can pick one up at the corner. Of these conditions, the one Tobias chose to “fix” in his version was the eventual slipping out of sync. as always, an update: Turns out there is also an AP of the 1987-90 edition. And the Renaissance Society in Chicago has reportedly left their locally made exhibition copy of “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), made in 1994, up in their offices. And in 2007, Glenn Ligon wrote in Artforum that he still had the “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) he made in 1996, soon after learning of Félix’s death.
![two prints by vija celmins show similar or identical [sic] small square images of the planet saturn in larger sheets of paper. the image is fuzzy, with the rings at an angle, based on an antique photo, i think, but the smaller sheet on the right is an offset print edition based on a single example of the mezzotint print edition on the left. both were made in 1985, and were based on a celmins drawing. they're relevant here because huygens saturn, obv, but also because they are in their own way an experiment in making things the same](https://greg.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/celmins-saturn-pair-arttransfer-whitney-1024x644.jpeg)
