'I'd like to propose once more the 'radical' idea that we can make this a better place for everyone.'
— Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Contemplative and deeply poetic, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 is a profoundly moving sculptural expression that is at once personal and poignantly universal, evoking myriad associations such as love, loss, and the potential for continuous renewal. “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 comprises two standard light bulbs in porcelain sockets, hanging from electrical cords, gently resting in the warm, softly diffused glow of the other. Executed in 1991, the year his partner Ross Laycock died of complications from AIDS, the work may be seen as a discreet celebration of the beginning of life rather than the finitude of death, as the work quietly incorporates Ross’s birthday into the parenthetical portion of its title, creating a space where ‘people do not endure alone; they survive in pairs, as part of loving couples who age together […] constituting a community of two.’ⁱ  Formally, Gonzalez-Torres’s use of parentheses alludes to the subtle ways in which language can shape our experiences, while also ensuring that his own experiences and references do not circumscribe the potential meanings that his work might accrue over time.

Highly representative of the American, Cuban-born artist’s conceptual practice in its charged use of everyday objects and expansive thematic scope, “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 marks the artist’s first use of illuminated light bulbs, directly prefiguring his celebrated light strings, a body of work comprising 24 pieces created between 1992 and 1994 which have since become synonymous with the artist. Of the artist’s works made with light bulbs, “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 is poetic in its careful union of concept and execution, the two bare bulbs elegantly suspended from long cords and intertwined like two lives.

 

Absence, Loss, and AIDS Activism
'I think one of the reasons that I made artwork was for Ross. […] I also make art to describe how I feel about other issues that are outside the so-called private sphere.'
—Felix Gonzalez Torres

While absence and the pain of loss are insinuated by many of Gonzalez-Torres’s conceptual works, surfacing in the billboard of an empty double bed, the stacks of papers, and the jigsaw puzzles produced by the artist from the late 1980s onwards, these themes are invariably intertwined with a broad horizon of other potential meanings and political contexts. Indeed, the use of commonplace forms and often allusive imagery were part of the artist’s nuanced efforts to ensure that the meaning of his works could remain thoroughly open-ended. In the context of the AIDS crisis and its exposure of an insidious homophobia that loomed large in cultural discourses during those years, Gonzalez-Torres’s works avoided entanglement in censorship through a notable avoidance of didactic expression; rather, the artist created works whose meanings are contingent upon their audiences. Gonzalez-Torres’s work can also be read in context with the politically engaged visual activism of Keith Haring’s work; however, Gonzalez-Torres’s artistic practice offers a distinct complement to his efforts as an activist—informed by, but not contingent upon any one political project. The profound power of a work like “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 lies not only in the experience of a specific historical moment, not only in the austere and resonant beauty of its form (and its subtle reference to a loved one), but in its graceful proposition that illness and loss are fundamentally interlaced with a potential for infinite renewal.

 

Also conceived in 1991, the moving installation “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) can be interpreted as addressing the physical realities of AIDS more directly. Its heap of candies in multi-coloured wrappers can diminish over time as participants remove the candies one by one. With an ideal weight of 175 pounds, the candies can be seen as a poignant surrogate for the body of a lost lover, friend, or stranger, yet the narrative is decidedly more complex than a literalization of loss, as the exhibitor can choose to replenish the candy at any time.

 

While Gonzalez-Torres’s candy works may conjure the individual body, massed bodies, and the physical reality of AIDS (among an infinite array of other intimations), “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 is aligned with a broader motif organised around the compositional structure of doubles. A work made nearly contemporaneously, and sharing nearly the same title, “Untitled” (March 5th) #1 used two circular mirrors to explore the persistence of love, feelings of loss, and the endurance of the coupled form: looking into one mirror, a viewer’s individual reflection may emphasise the emptiness of the second, or it may be seen in concert with the reflection of another. Echoing this coupling, “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 adds a significant durational element—while both bulbs glow together, one will eventually burn out. Yet this loss is not permanent; when a bulb burns out, it must be immediately replaced, thereby pairing the experience of loss with the prospect of regeneration (The work may be exhibited with both bulbs turned on, or both bulbs turned off.) This cycle of uniformity, change, and renewal is also present in the compositionally related “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), where two wall clocks are installed side-by-side and set to the same time, moving in synchronicity until one inevitably slows and potentially stops, at which point the clocks are to be reset to the accurate time in the location of their installation. In the clocks of “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) and the paired bulbs of “Untitled” (March 5th) #2, we may see a universal fear ‘of being just one,’ just as we might see an artist reconciling such fears with belief in a certain promise of immortality.^iv

 

Duchamp and the Readymade

'I think more than anything else I'm just an extension of certain practices, minimalism or conceptualism, that I am developing areas I think were not totally dealt with.'
—Felix Gonzalez-Torres

In his use of mass-produced, quotidian objects, Gonzalez-Torres’s work may recall the earliest Dada Readymades developed by Marcel Duchamp and his contemporaries. The materials used in “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 suggest a particular proximity to Duchamp’s glass constructions, and the glass vial of ‘Paris Air’ that he gifted to Walter Arensberg in 1919. Like Duchamp, Gonzalez-Torres understood that the quotidian object was so familiar as to be open to multiple meanings, endowing it with a certain metaphorical power. The light bulb immediately conjures associations tied to light, energy, warmth, security, and home to name a few, which are amplified by the presentation of the bulbs as a couple. Building on these metaphorical foundations, the work’s allusive yet open-ended title, and the artist’s subtle engagement of both personal memories and shared universal experiences, we can perceive a wholesale recontextualization of these associations and the introduction of more complex ideas surrounding finitude, fragility, separation, loss and their potential inverses of endlessness, durability, union, and renewal.

 

Far from Duchamp’s claim that the everyday objects involved in his Dada Readymades were selected with ‘visual indifference,’ Gonzalez-Torres’s choice of objects was carefully considered, imbuing them with metaphorical weight and poetic significance. Similarly, while his sculptural forms often elicit comparison to Minimalism’s coolly detached use of immediately available objects—such as Dan Flavin’s light sculptures or Donald Judd’s stacks—the artist makes significant departures from this tradition of impersonal neutrality, instead making work ‘at once lyrical in its poetry of loss and strident in its cry of rage.’ⁱⁱ

 

The generosity and collaborative nature of Gonzalez-Torres’s practice is perhaps best summed up by his desire that curators showing his work, owners, and anyone interacting with his work would play a participatory role (which varies among different bodies of work). Asked about an "ideal response" to his work, Gonzalez-Torres replied: "The answer will be very rhetorical because it would be, in each case, dependent upon the site, the date, and the purpose or the work, which changes in each case. I suppose I would be satisfied if they took action sometimes, or if it caused them to be critical, moved, inspired. Or to celebrate difference and the idea of change and renewal, the chance for love. I'd like to propose once more the 'radical' idea that we can make this a better place for everyone.“ⁱⁱⁱ

 

ⁱ Nancy Spector, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, (exh. cat.) The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996, p. 143.
ⁱⁱ Felix Gonzalez-Torres, quoted in Nancy Spector, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, (exh. cat.) The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996, p. 15.

ⁱⁱⁱ Ferguson, Bruce. “Felix  Gonzalez-Torres” (Taped interview). Rhetorical Image. By Deidre Summerbell. New York: New Museum. 1990. P. 48.