5 x 7 inches
Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience. As with most of his works, the photograph is untitled followed by a parenthesis that provides some context clues. In this case, an inscription on the reverse of the photograph reads: For Laura (Alice B. Toklas + Gertrude Stein Flower Bed in Paris). Alice B. Toklas moved to Paris in 1906, leaving San Francisco after its devastating earthquake. She met Gertrude Stein the day after she arrived in Paris, and they remained life partners until Stein’s death forty years later. The couple was known as an integral facet of the Parisian avant-garde, hosting figures such as Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Hemingway. Stein wrote. Taken four years before González-Torres passed away due to AIDS in 1996, this photograph is at once an homage to the couple’s story of love, their strength and resilience, as well as a deeply personal mediation on his own experience of love and loss. This romantic and wistfully melancholic work documents the historical precedent for influential, openly gay culture makers, and is an homage to their memory and significance.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres is known for taking everyday objects and situations and imbuing them with powerful new meanings. Although his formal language echoes Minimal and Conceptual art, the striking visual simplicity and beauty of his installations operate as vehicles to lure audiences, allowing him to incorporate deeply personal narratives, and more broadly to serve humanistic ends by addressing themes relating to identity, gender, desire, love, and loss. Several pieces from his oeuvre relate to his experience as an openly gay man who experienced the devastating effects that the AIDS epidemic in the US had on the queer community. The celebrated works Untitled (Perfect Lovers) (1991), consisting of two store-bought wall clocks ticking next to each other, and Untitled (1991), a billboard with the image of an empty, unmade bed—are both examples of deeply personal responses to the passing of his long-time partner, Ross Laycock, from AIDS.
Susan Sontag, the author of On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others, was captured through Hujar’s now-iconic photograph in a relaxed yet pensive pose...
The title Untitled Passport II was first used by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in an unlimited edition of small booklets, each containing sequenced photographs of a soaring bird against an open sky...
Half Dome Hough Transform by Trevor Paglen merges traditional American landscape photography (sometimes referred as ‘frontier photography’ for sites located in the American West) with artificial intelligence and other technological advances such as computer vision...
White Corner (2006) is a video installation, projected on two protruding perpendicular walls...
This photograph of Martin Creed himself was used as the invitation card for a fundraising auction of works on paper at Christie’s South Kensington in support of Camden Arts Centre’s first year in a refurbished building in 2005...
I Am Cuba— “Soy Cuba” in Spanish; “Ya Kuba” in Russian—is a Soviet/Cuban film produced in 1964 by director Mikhail Kalatozov at Mosfilm...
This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series...
Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor, through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...
Fashion is the focus of Blood Sugar , which consists of a video projected onto a vintage vinyl jacket set at torso height on a dressmaker’s dummy...
Report of the Legal Subcommittee is a print featuring a map of the stars, together with a found transcription of a recent United Nations meeting in which various international delegations declare frustration with their 40-year-old, ongoing efforts to devise a legal definition of outer space...
Trevor Paglen’s ongoing research focuses on artificial intelligence and machine vision, i.e...
Haendel’s series Knights (2011) is a set of impeccably drafted, nine-foot-tall pencil drawings depicting full suits of armor...
Matthew Buckingham presents a narrative directly connected with a highly symbolic site in the United States, the Mount Rushmore Memorial*...
Hernan Bas’s recent works, particularly his series “The Conceptualists,” showcase his continued exploration into the realms of queerness, desire, the occult, and the absurd...
Slow Graffiti was produced for Da Corte’s exhibition at the Vienna Secession in 2017...
Martin Creed | The Dick Institute Experience the work of one of this country’s most ingenious, audacious and surprising artists at the Dick Institute ARTIST ROOMS Martin Creed presents highlights from the British artist’s thirty-year career...