ART-PRESENTATION: Félix González-Torres,Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres is one of the most significant artists to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Employing simple, everyday materials (stacks of paper, puzzles, candy, strings of lights, beads) and a reduced aesthetic vocabulary reminiscent of both Minimalism and Conceptual Art to address themes such as love and loss, sickness and rejuvenation, gender and sexuality, González-Torres asked viewers to participate in establishing meaning in his works.

By Dimitris Lempesis

Andrea Rosen Gallery and David Zwirner present a live exhibition of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner)” in various places throughout the world. This exhibition invites an international group of 1,000 people to each manifest the work as a “place” as part of one total “site” of this expansive exhibition. Invitees who choosed to participate were given a set of parameters specifically for this exhibition, thus establishing a fresh set of artistic interventions. Participants initiate the installation in their “place” with between 240 to 1,000 fortune cookies. In addition to this decision, each “place” decided the location and configuration of the pile, beginning on May 25, 2020. Individuals are permitted to take pieces from the work, and the participants will regenerate their piles (back to the amount with which they started) halfway through the presentation, on June 14. The exhibition recognizes this unique moment in history and reflects the ever-relevant and flexible nature of the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Like many of Gonzalez-Torres’s works, including his candy works and paper stacks, “Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner)” addresses the capacity for immortality through regeneration, heightened by the experience of loss within these works. As Gonzalez-Torres was interested in his work providing an opportunity for questioning, some questions that may be broached by this work and this exhibition were provided to participants. Much of Gonzalez-Torres’s work asks owners, curators, participants, and viewers alike to engage with his oeuvre beyond the confines of an institution or gallery space. Here, each participant is asked to document the manifestation of the work throughout the course of the six-week exhibition, which may include the installation process, the work’s context, interaction with the work, and how the work ebbs and flows. This exhibition also addresses notions of audience and accessibility, and our understanding of public and private space. Documentation of this physical exhibition, “Untitled” (Fortune Cookie Corner), will be viewable on both Andrea Rosen Gallery’s website, under Live Projects, and David Zwirner’s website beginning May 25, 2020.

Info: Curator: Andrea Rosen, Various locations around the world, Duration: 25/5-5/7/20