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Félix González-Torres FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY Museum für Moderne Kunst Félix Danh Vo re-installed the debut at the WIELS at home, including the AIDS crisis. The art space in Brussels,while Carol Bove did the combination of public and private also comes honours for the second stop at the Fondation to bear in Untitled (1989), which consists of Beyeler in Riehen near Basel. This spring, Tino words painted in a continuous line on a wall Sehgal took on the show’s third and final stop as a frieze around a room: ‘Civil Rights Act at the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in 1964 Our Own Apartment 1976 Berlin Wall Frankfurt am Main. 1989 An Easy Death 1991’, among others. Filipovic’s presentation at the MMK did Some visitors might have been surprised to precisely what an opening act should do: set see ‘Obama 2008’ added by Filipovic, but the the scene and let the audience get to know addition expressed Gonzalez-Torres’ desire the main characters. Untitled (Perfect Lovers) that his work continue to live: never static, (1987–90) appeared at the coat check: two always changing. wall clocks hung side by side, set to the same This thought was taken to the extreme time, only to fall out of synch with their fading with Tino Sehgal’s intervention in the second battery power. This installation exposed some act, which functioned as both a re-reading and of the artist’s concerns – the melancholy of a eulogy. Sehgal invited a team of art students love, the fleetingness of time, the transforma- to reposition the works continually, thus creat- tion of the ordinary into vessels of emotion ing ever-changing connections between them, – and one of his most basic tenets: A work in a careful choreography. The re-installation does not have to be treated as sacred, lasted for about six hours straight; a room was Familiarity does breed contempt. But installed in a white cube and lit to perfection. ‘finished’ only to be changed again. Even indi- worse than contempt is ambivalence or Accidental discoveries – in places like the vidual works were arranged in a new fashion. disregard: knowing something so well – or coat check where one is unprepared to be Who knew that the candy did not have to be thinking you do – that it no longer touches confronted with ‘museum art’ – can be set up in perfect geometric shapes but could you, that the joy of the experience has been more engaging. also be simply poured out on the floor? The diminished, perhaps irrevocably. The first room elucidated how public strings of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling In this frame of mind, I traipsed off to and private are intertwined, emotionally and in Untitled (For Stockholm) (1992) were lined see the retrospective ‘Felix Gonzalez-Torres. politically, with works from the late 1980s up on the floor or around the edges of a room; Specific Objects without Specific Form’. Was including Untitled (1988). This first ‘stack’ once handled, some bulbs burnt out. there anything left to add to the art historical piece is made up of a fat sheaf of photocop- The change in public response from the canon that attends the oeuvre of the Cuban ies identifying important political moments first act to the second act was spectacular. artist, who settled in New York in the 1970s that had an impact on Gonzalez-Torres’ life: Silent and slightly reverential people – read- and died of AIDS-related complications in ‘Helms Amendment 1987 Anita Bryant ing the guide, tentatively approaching works, 1996 at the age of 39? The piles of candy 1977 Cardinal O’Connor 1988’, among whispering to one another – were replaced by are a comment on life’s fragility; their slow others. While later stacks were put on the actively engaged players, talking loudly to one diminishment is a metaphor for the process floor, Gonzalez-Torres placed this very first another, to complete strangers and, inevitably, of dying… Didn’t we learn that in college? one on a pedestal. Visitors were allowed to the museum guards and Sehgal’s handlers. What this compelling show accentuated is to take a photocopy, but the work created In a 1995 interview with Robert Storr, that learning by rote is no substitute for expe- an uncertainty, which was augmented Gonzalez-Torres addressed the topic of the rience and that, as González-Torres posited, by the pedestal, about what can and can’t guards, whom he also saw as his audience, everything does and should change, even be done in a public museum. and Sehgal brought this element back to life. artworks. To this end, curator Elena Filipovic Subsequent rooms and works confounded While the first act performed its didactic conceived each stop of this travelling retro- American politics of the ’80s with the artist’s role elegantly, the second reinvigorated the spective as a kind of play in two acts. She existence as a gay man infected with HIV. exhibition with a degree of engagement always curated the first act as a chronological Untitled (God Bless Our Country and Now unusual for a public museum. What Sehgal overview. For the second act, one contem- Back to War) (1989) – framed newspaper achieved was like a brilliant cover song porary artist influenced by Gonzalez-Torres’ clippings – exposes the outward jingoism that of an old classic which allows you to work re-curated her installation half-way Gonzalez-Torres felt was a smokescreen to rediscover the original all over again and through the show’s duration. Last year, distract Americans from untenable situations gets you singing along. FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES Untitled (For Stockholm) 1992/2011 Second presentation by Tino Sehgal SommerSummer2011 | frieze d/e | 123 MARCH - APRIL 2010 BRUSSELS ELENA FILIPOVIC: A SENSITIVE RESPONSE Marie De Brugerolle the author’s question for the discover lesser-known works artist and the question of pow- from the artist. Felix Gonzalez- er for the curator. The objects Torres makes art with history: used by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, the history of Cuban immi- especially the piles of candies grants, of the United States and or posters that are at the audi- also of his father. The piles of ence’s disposal, imply their candies and posters — whose collaboration but also their quantity is undefined — play responsibility. It makes a dif- with the dialectic of choice ference if I take one candy or if and responsibility. It’s a dual I take ten. I remember seeing a path; what should I do with gigantic pile of golden candies what I take? To take or not to at the Guggenheim in 1995 take will always be the ques- that visitors scooped up with tion. Like the big curtain of plastic coffee cups because golden beads that completely they were free. It’s a matter closes off the space and forces of obscenity and responsibil- the visitor to pass through it ity. When you think of sweets “Untitled” (Golden), 1995, the in colorful paper in terms of visitor must make a choice. proliferation and loss, of white Double clocks, double mirrors blood cells and the HIV virus, “Untitled” (Orpheus, Twice), the act of taking them is made 1991, build a double portrait FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES, Specific Objects without Specific Form, 2010. Installation with a more acute conscience. whose presence is tangible. views at WEILS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels. Photo: Sven Laurent. The gravity, the mass, the infi- The new curator of Wiels, — to reshape the idea of the The exhibition at Wiels is built nite and incalculable quantity Elena Filipovic, has conceived exhibition itself. Each artist inside the common areas as requires the involvement of a new project that is a sensitive was invited to choose new well as outside; so the Salle de the viewer. From singular to and ingenious response to Fe- works after the exhibition’s Brassage, the silo (Wiels was universal, Gonzalez-Torres lix Gonzalez-Torres’ work. It is initial opening at Wiels in or- once a brewery and the silo a made open-ended works that an exhibition of the works that der to remake the show using grain bin) and the restrooms allow us to follow history out respects the works’ aesthetic Filipovic’s original selections. are the respective locations of the frame. Like his bill- and political criteria. It is the first Gonzalez-Torres for the wall clocks “Untitled” boards around New York City, Is it possible to show a work retrospective conceived ac- (Perfect Lovers), 1987-1990, his portrait is our portrait. “… that challenges visible limits cording to the challenges of the mirrors “Untitled” (March a new happy crowd / a blue and questions artistic, social the work itself, construed as a 5th) #1, 1991, and a garland lake / loop into the void / a and institutional conventions series of dualities: authority/re- of light bulbs “Untitled” found black cat / a love meal / when the artist is no longer sponsibility; visible/invisible; (America), 1994-1995. The a room with curtains / a view with us? Can one put into play joie de vivre/sense of loss; exhibition delicately unfolds to remember.” and activate forms conceived light/dark. Authority asks on two floors and allows us to by someone else in a differ- ent context and challenge that same institution? Using these questions as a starting point, Elena Filipovic structured a project in three parts, inviting three artists — Carol Bove at the Foundation Beyler Basel, Danh Vo at Wiels in Brussels and Tino Sehgal at Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst KALEIDOSCOPE SUMMER 2010 On the occasion of a retrospective of Felix THE Gonzalez-Torres they were both invited to “remix,” DANH VO and SUBTLE CAROL BOVE discuss the legacy of the American BODY artist, curating, and the ephemerality of the exhibition.

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