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It was pitch-perfect post-minimalist art from the 1990s.
Here and there, someone bent down, took a candy, and sampled it.
Gonzalez-Torress work exists essentially as sets of instructions.
A museum or collector purchases a certificate and may show, sell, or lend the work.
The instructions for Untitled (Ross),1991, are: Candies in variously colored wrappers, endless supply.
Overall dimensions vary with installation.
Ideal weight: 175 lb.
Gonzalez-Torres said, This work cannot disappear … the same way other things in my life have disappeared.
He said, Aesthetics are politics.
And an undoing of death.
You eat of his body and join with some essence of him.
Its a kind of transubstantiation.
Untitled(Public Opinion)was also made the same year as the death of Gonzalez-Torress father.
This fills the gallery with a magnificent presence of freedom.
Art is a verb.
To his materials and forms, Gonzalez-Torres adds oral gratification, touch, sugar highs.
On the last day of his show at Zwirner, another radical aspect was added.
It was like a Tasmania to the sculpture.
I wanted to repair the piece.
Like a good little prig, I thought to alert a gallery attendant.
Im glad I didnt.
Then all hell broke loose.
They drove canals into it, created lakes and hearts.
It was tremendous, a mutation of the aesthetic gene Gonzalez-Torres had created.
Some kids wrote L A T I N A M E R I C A in black licorice.
Another group used the candy to speak about gay rights.
Untitled(Public Opinion)was now graffiti.
Elsewhere, people created looping paisley or geometric patterns.
On one side two women were re-creating a portrait of the Mona Lisa using their iPhones as reference.
The mood was joyous.
Something that had had just one form now had many, like a giant Etch a Sketch.
People poured candy into Tiffany bags.
