Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs parading at openings with your pseudo-intellectual commentary on contemporary art. I’m going to talk to you about Felix González-Torres (1957-1996), the artist who managed the feat of transforming candies into political manifestos and light bulbs into incandescent declarations of love. And if you think I’m about to serve you yet another consensual and virtuous analysis, you’ve got it completely wrong.
González-Torres is probably one of the most subversive artists America produced in the 20th century. Not because he sought to shock—leave that to amateurs—but because he infiltrated the art system with devilish subtlety. Just imagine: he managed to bring heaps of candies into the world’s greatest museums, to convince wealthy collectors to purchase stacks of paper meant to disappear, and to transform supermarket string lights into major works of art. If that isn’t high-level subversion, I don’t know what is.
Take his famous “candy piles”. At first glance, nothing could be simpler: mountains of wrapped candies sparkling on gallery floors. Visitors are invited to help themselves, and each evening, a museum employee meticulously replenishes the pile. Some see this as a form of artistic generosity, a democratization of art. But it’s much more devious than that. When González-Torres created Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) in 1991, he set the initial weight to 79 kilograms, precisely the healthy weight of his lover Ross Laycock. Over the days, the pile dwindles, mirroring Ross’s body ravaged by AIDS, only to be “resurrected” each morning. It’s a modern-day memento mori, a constant reminder of our collective fragility.
But González-Torres doesn’t stop at the personal metaphor. He transforms this intimate experience into a political act. During the AIDS crisis, as the gay community was stigmatized and the Reagan administration remained criminally silent, he chose not to scream his anger but to distill it into gestures of devastating elegance. The candies are no longer mere sweets; they become cells dispersing, bodies vanishing, and memories shared.
This strategy of subtle infiltration was perfected by González-Torres like no one else. Take his “beaded curtains”, those cascades of beads seemingly plucked straight from a 1970s middle-class apartment. He installed them in museums as partitions between spaces, forcing visitors to physically pass through them. It’s an experience both sensual and disconcerting. The beads brush your skin like fleeting kisses, but they also remind you that every boundary is porous, that the lines between public and private, personal and political, are always negotiable.
His twin clock series, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), takes this logic even further. Two identical clocks hang side by side, synchronized at first but inevitably falling out of sync over time. It’s a metaphor for love and death of breathtaking simplicity. But it’s also a sharp critique of our obsession with normalizing romantic relationships. These two clocks ticking at their own pace remind us that love doesn’t follow social conventions; it exists in its own time.
González-Torres was a master at transforming everyday objects into conceptual time bombs. His stacks of white paper, for instance, seem utterly mundane. Yet by inviting visitors to take a sheet, he transforms each one into a potential vehicle for meaning and memory. The paper becomes a canvas for projection, a space of infinite possibilities. Most importantly, it challenges the very notion of art as a unique and precious object.
This questioning of the artwork’s status is particularly evident in his light installations. Ordinary strings of light bulbs, like those found at any fairground, are transformed into lines of light tracing ephemeral geometries in space. The bulbs burn out, are replaced, and the configuration changes with each installation. The artwork is no longer a finished object but a process in constant evolution.
González-Torres’s billboards are perhaps his boldest works. In 1991, he installed a series of billboards in New York City depicting nothing but an unmade bed, its sheets still crumpled by absent bodies. It’s an image of heart-wrenching intimacy but also an act of political resistance. During the AIDS epidemic, as gay bodies were either rendered invisible or demonized, he chose to depict not illness or death but the traces of love and desire.
What’s fascinating about González-Torres is his ability to allow different levels of interpretation to coexist. His works function as conceptual Trojan horses. They present themselves as seductive and accessible but carry explosive charges that challenge our certainties about art, love, politics, and death.
Take his Bloodworks series from 1989. Abstract graphs that resemble mundane scientific data are, in fact, T-cell counts of AIDS patients, transformed into geometric compositions of chilling beauty. González-Torres achieves the feat of rendering the invisible visible, of turning medical data into a meditation on life’s fragility.
His use of repetition is particularly significant. Candies, sheets of paper, and light bulbs are always presented in large quantities, creating accumulations that evoke both abundance and loss. This strategy echoes Walter Benjamin’s theories on the mechanical reproduction of art, but González-Torres pushes it in a radically new direction. Reproduction is no longer a loss of aura but a multiplication of meanings.
The influence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is also evident in his work. The emphasis on bodily experience and how we physically inhabit space is central to pieces like the beaded curtains or candy piles. The viewer is no longer a mere observer but an active participant in the creation of meaning.
González-Torres also revolutionized the notion of ownership in art. His certificates of authenticity, accompanying each work, are masterpieces of institutional subversion. They specify that the artwork can be infinitely reproduced, that its form can change, and that its materials can be replaced. It’s a radical redefinition of what it means to own a work of art.
The temporal dimension is omnipresent in his work. Whether in the clocks falling out of sync, the piles diminishing, or the light bulbs burning out, González-Torres constantly reminds us of our own temporality. Yet unlike the traditional vanitas in art history, this isn’t merely a reminder of our mortality. There’s always the possibility of renewal, of rebirth.
This tension between disappearance and renewal is at the heart of his work. The piles are replenished, the bulbs replaced, the candies restocked. It’s an endless cycle evoking the great cycles of life and death but also the persistence of memory and love. González-Torres shows us that loss isn’t the end but a transformation.
His approach to minimalism is particularly intriguing. He adopts the formal vocabulary of minimalism—simple geometry, repetition, industrial materials—but injects an emotional and political charge that minimalists sought to avoid. It’s a subtle hijacking that reveals his deep understanding of contemporary art codes.
The way González-Torres addresses identity is equally remarkable. Although openly gay and politically engaged, he systematically refuses direct representation. No martyred bodies, no activist slogans, no explicit imagery. Instead, he creates works that speak of love, loss, and resistance in a way so universal that they resonate with everyone, while retaining their political specificity.
His work with light deserves special attention. From string lights to the reflections on beaded curtains, light is always used as a material in its own right. It creates spaces, defines volumes, and generates emotions. But it’s fragile, precarious, ready to extinguish at any moment—like life itself.
González-Torres’s last major work, Untitled (Last Light) from 1993, is perhaps his most moving. A simple string of light bulbs cascades from the ceiling like a waterfall of light. It’s both an artistic testament and a declaration of love for life, a work that speaks of finitude while radiating hope.
In a contemporary art world often dominated by spectacle and provocation, Felix González-Torres reminds us that true radicality can reside in the simplest gestures. He shows us that one can be profoundly political without being didactic, poetic without being sentimental, and conceptual without being hermetic.
His influence on contemporary art is immense and continues to grow. He paved the way for art that can be both accessible and complex, personal and political, ephemeral and enduring. He showed us that art is not just about objects to be admired but about experiences to be shared and meanings to be constructed collectively.
The next time you encounter a work by Felix González-Torres, don’t just admire it from a distance. Take a candy, walk through the beaded curtain, take a sheet of paper. Because it’s in this interaction, in this active participation, that his art finds its full meaning. He reminds us that art, like life, isn’t meant to remain fixed on a pedestal but to circulate, transform, disappear, and be reborn endlessly.
González-Torres left us far too soon, taken by AIDS in 1996, but his work continues to shine like his string lights, fragile yet persistent, reminding us that even in the darkest moments, beauty and love always find a way to survive.