PUBLIC ART ON CAMPUS

“Untitled” (L.A.)

Installations of Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American, 1957–1996)
September 2022 through December 2023

“Untitled” (L.A.) installed at UChicago’s MADD Center. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Photos: Claire Rich.

“Untitled” (L.A.)

1991

Green candies in clear wrappers, endless supply
Overall dimensions vary with installation
Original dimensions: approx. 192 x 14 x 1 1⁄2 inches
Original weight: 50 lbs.

Jointly owned by Art Bridges and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

“Untitled” (L.A.) was first installed in the Smart Museum of Art exhibition Monochrome Multitudes (September 22, 2022–January 8, 2023) and in the Media Arts, Data, and Design Center (MADD) on the first floor of the Crerar Library. The artwork will be installed in additional locations across the University of Chicago campus from January to December 2023. 

You can have something green if you want; the candies are for taking. But would you really call this sculpture “green?” Just as a bed of wrapped, round candies is only apparently flat, other of “Untitled” (L.A.)’s properties fill our actual experience of “green,” here and now, with change and difference. Against uniformity Gonzalez-Torres deploys a profusion of textures: a sparkling upper surface, broad, wavering outline, and surprisingly brilliant color.

Here, “green” is used and lived, not simply conceived. The artist doesn’t present green directly to the eye: crinkled clear plastic and the underlying floor or plinth both intervene, coloring the color with projected and reflected light. Get down low and observe the packages’ wildly varied footing, the sheer amount of space within the form. Get up again and you will immediately perceive the countless facets, literal and imaginary, those real pathways contribute to the thing seen. As though nothing here is one thing—including the part we’re invited to play.

Written by Darby English, Carl Darling Buck Professor, Department of Art History

RELATED AUDIO ENTRIES

LISTEN: Candy Pixels and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (L.A.) 
narrated by Marc Downie, Lecturer in the Department of Cinema & Media Studies, Media Arts & Design, and the College at the University of Chicago

Transcript:
I’m going to be talking about “Untitled” (L.A.) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. It’s kind of digital and discrete, it comes in little lumps. But the little pieces of candy this piece comes in are much more interesting than the ones and zeros of my world. It seems like you might be able to write a description of it and that’s what it is: it’s a bunch of candy left on the floor, it slowly disappears over time. But like any really good work of art, it has an unexpected payoff. It sort of exceeds what its description is, and you don’t know what this thing’s going to do, you don’t know how it’s going to feel like, you don’t know how it’s going to behave until you experience it. And in this particular case, until you experience it for a long time. There’s something really hard to predict about this.

So it’s a piece that I’m walking past once a week, twice a week, and it’s really unexpected every time. You don’t know what size it’s going to be, right? It might have been replenished, it might have disappeared altogether. And you don’t know how you’re going to feel about that—because it’s made out of everyday objects and it’s embedded in the everyday. This is a really sticky piece, right? You encounter it in your own head much later. And that’s really exciting because, you know, it’s exciting when art has this sort of explosion into the world.

LISTEN: “Girlfriend in a Coma” and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (L.A.)
narrated by Cecille Graham, Student in the College

Transcript:
♪ Girlfriend in a coma, I know
I know, it’s really serious
There were times when I could
Have murdered her
But you know, I would hate
Anything to happen to her ♪♪

Hi, my name is Cecille Graham, I’m a college student at the University of Chicago and a student in the “Monochrome Multitudes” seminar.

“Girlfriend in a Coma” is the title of a song by the Smiths. The Smiths lyrics center on a man confronted with the severity of his girlfriend’s comatose state.

In 1996, this artwork here was part of Felix’s exhibition at Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris: “Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Girlfriend in a Coma).” The press release referenced AIDS specifically as inspiration for the exhibit, in stating Felix Gonzalez’s view of the body as a complicated site of all repressions, pains, and pleasures, echoing the ambivalence of Morrisey’s lyrics.

Certain artworks by Felix Gonzalez-Torres make explicit connection to his identity as a gay man, especially in addressing the horrific reality of the AIDS epidemic and homophobia.

“Untitled” (L.A.) was created in 1991, the same year that Gonzalez-Torres’s beloved partner Ross Laycock lost his life due to an AIDS-related illness, and only a few years before Felix’s own eventual death in 1996.

Gonzalez-Torres said of his “Untitled” candy series: “Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that’s why I made works of art.”

♪ Do you really think
She’ll pull through
Do you really think
She’ll pull through
Ooh ooh ooh ♪♪