Wiels | EN

The exhibition reflects the short but prolific career of Gonzalez-Torres, whose work engages critically with Conceptual art and Minimalism, mixing political activism, emotional affect, and deep formal concerns in a wide range of media, often using ordinary objects as a starting pointclocks, paper, light fixtures. Amongst his most famous artworks are his piles of candy and stacks of paper from which viewers are allowed to take away a piece. The constantly changing result offers a model of the work of art as unstable and precarious, like life itself. What emerges is a profoundly human body of work, intimate and fragile even as it destabilizes so many seemingly unshakable certainties: the artwork as fixed, the author as the ultimate form-giver, the exhibition as a place to look but not touch. By offering two radically different versions of an exhibition devoted to Gonzalez-Torres iconic artworks, this retrospective insists that there is no correct, absolute, or singular way to present the oeuvre of an artist like Gonzalez-Torres whose entire practice insisted on both the fragility of the artwork and the questioning of authorities of all kinds.

The first exhibition, a selection of 46 artworks installed by curator Elena Filipovic was shown from January 16-February 28th. Artist Danh Vo was then invited to reinstall the exhibition: in his version, he has selected 17 Gonzalez-Torres pieces, having decided to radically reduce the number of exhibited artworks, preferring to create a sparse and poetic scenography that emphasizes the visitors physical relationship to each object and the space they find themselves in. Vos installation of the exhibition constitutes one artists interpretation of another artists iconic artworks. Vo, an artist whose own practice has been deeply influenced by Gonzalez-Torress work, has created careful juxtapositions and dialogues that reveal a new reading of Gonzalez-Torres art.