Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991
Two clocks that show the time synchronised
Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957 - 1996) combined the impulses of Conceptual art, Minimalism, political activism, and chance to produce a number of "democratic artworks"--- including public billboards, give-away piles of candies, and stacks of paper available to the viewer as souvenirs. These works, often sensuous and directly audience-centered, complicate the questions of public and private space, authorship, originality and the role of institutionalized meaning. He used the stuff of interior design--electric light fixtures, jigsaw puzzles, paired mirrors, wall clocks and beaded curtains--to queer exhibition spaces in the most simple and poignant ways. His primary audience, as he explained in an interview reproduced here, was his lover, Ross (who died of AIDS 6 years before his own death in 1996). Yet his work clearly appeals to a large audience for its combination of formal restraint and emotional lushness. The theme of lovers is comingled with themes of mortality, loss and absence which surface in the later work.
