Felix Gonzalez-Torres
September 14-December 15, 2023 I Constance W. Glenn Court Untitled (L.A.), 1991, one of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' candy-spill works 1s an opportunity for Museum visitors to participate in the completion of the work as it is installed in Constance W. Glenn Court. An important CubanAmerican artist whose life was caught short by AIDS-related causes, Felix Gonzalez-Torres' works often center the viewer as an integral element in the meaning he seeks to communicate. Viewers are invited to take a piece of candy from the spills. In so doing, they complete an exchange between the artist and viewer. This exchange is not only one of candy as material to be happily shared. As visitors take candy, the shrinking dimensions of the spill function as a metaphor for a body ravaged by AIDS wasting syndrome, a meditation on the commodification of art as a product to be consumed, and a declaration of an artist and viewer disrupting traditional Museum practices which seek to preserve art in static time. Untitled (L.A.) is generously on loan from Art Bridges Foundation and shared as a prologue to Drag Show on view in the Main Gallery through December.