Customer Reviews

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

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This is perhaps the best monograph of any contemporary artist out there today. Spector's essay is reserved, lucid, and leaves room for the imagination of the reader. She balances her own ideas with numerous quotes by the artist, developing a partnership, a conversation. And the reproductions are just stunning. Reading this book is an intimate experience--it captures the spirit of Felix Gonzales Torres' work and life. It's the sort of book you'll carry with you everywhere and never know just why.

this is not a picture book but a book that discuss about felix ideas and thoughts. beautifully presented. small format. 6" x 8".

This small book, incredibly well edited, is the perfect way to enter into the extremely poetic and conceptual universe of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. The book were released months before his death in 1996, so he was in part responsible of its content and structure.

This reedition gives a great opportunity to know him better, to appreciate him better and to understand why the United States chosed him to represent the country at Venice's Bienalle of 2007, eleven years after his tragic final.

If you want to have just one book about him this one is the perfect choice.

Felix Gonzales-Torres ( 1957-1996 ) was a many-sided artist.
He uses photographs, A1 sheets of paper stacked one upon the other, light bulbs ( white not
colored ) and even large amounts of candy wrappers with the same colour.

He has everything of a minimal art performer and yet the materials he uses ( albeit not at the same time ) and the different ways of displaying his art ( walls of buildings, corridors, rooms and staircases ) are so complex that it would be laughable to call his work 'minimal art'.
If it's necessary to give him a name I would call him an explorer. I believe it's the purpose of an artist to search what lies beyond the horizon.

I believe also in the value of abstract art. It emphasizes the essence of what we see: colour, shape and the different relations between one and the other.

Art with artificial light is the fascinating area between abstract painting and sculpture. Only a few artists so far, had the courage to walk that borderline and one of them was Gonzales-Torres.
His 'light-art' is simple ( He uses for instance only burning white lamps ). For example a large corridor in a modern building has several garlands of light against one wall, or strings of white lights attached to the ceiling and pouring down like rain to the floor to form a pool of light.

If you want to know everything about this fascinating artist you should read this book.