Felix Gonzalez-Torres and the traces of memory
Blickwechsel: Schenkung Sammlung Hoffmann / Porzellansammlung im Residenzschloss
Exhibition Site: Residenzschloss
Dates: 22/07/2026—12/10/2026
There is a knee-high stack of posters in the Tower Room on the bel étage of the Dresden Royal Palace. The “paper stacks” – that visitors are invited to take home – are an important group of works by the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. They emerged from his criticism of the idea that artworks are always valuable and immutable objects. With his precise floor sculptures made of papers laid on top of each other with exactitude, the artist makes reference to the artistic movement of Minimalism and its orientation on objects. It appears the central sentence “We don’t remember” which is printed on this work comes from a German press article from the Wende years. The disappearance of memory expressed in this statement corresponds with the gradually shrinking artwork. Yet what is it that we don’t remember?