Felix Gonzalez-Torres | Sarasota

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996 Cuba) used everyday materials such as lightbulbs paper and candy to engage viewers in deeper consideration of intrapersonal and cultural issues. After moving to New York City in the early 1980s Gonzalez-Torres joined Group Material a community-based artist collaborative that repositioned the relationship between artist artwork and viewer through direct involvement and education. Gonzalez-Torres conveyed this intention in his own practice through works that challenged the notion of what defines art and how people should experience it.
“Untitled” (L.A.) is one of the artist’s candy spill works that employs the familiar and alluring material of candy—its eye-catching reflective wrappers irresistible sweetness and comforting nostalgia. The artist invites us to activate our senses to foster a profound corporal relationship with the art object. Gonzalez-Torres insisted there be trust between artist and viewer whereby the artwork serves as the neutral ground between the two. He also trusted in the power of the artwork itself. Rather than dictating a single narrative Gonzalez-Torres left his work untitled allowing viewers the space to see think and feel what is true to their own experience.

The artwork at its core is about human experience and the artist hints at his own with the parenthetical title (L.A.). Los Angeles was home for Gonzalez-Torres and his longtime partner Ross Laycock whom the artist lost to complications with AIDS in 1991 the year this work was created. Gonzalez-Torres’ candy spills began as a representation of Laycock with the depletion of the candy acting as a metaphor for the physical loss of the person but evolved to represent a variety of memories and existences. To honor the artist’s intentions the candy is replenished every so often through which the people places and ideas they represent remain everlasting.