Felix Gonzalez-Torres - "Untitled" (Go-Go Dancing Platform)
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street
542 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011
Tue-Sat 10am-6pm
Admission
Free Admission
About
We are honored to present Felix Gonzalez-Torres' "Untitled" (Go-Go Dancing Platform), 1991, one of the most significant works by an artist whose career spanned less than a decade yet continues to shape conversations about participation, intimacy and public space thirty years after his death from AIDS at the age of 38. "Untitled" (Go-Go Dancing Platform) consists of a painted blue platform framed by 48 light bulbs. When the work is installed, a dancer may appear once a day, at unscheduled times—wearing silver lamé and listening to music of their own choosing through headphones—ascending the platform for brief unchoreographed performances in which they are only dancing for themselves. The dancer draws forth surprise, desire and projection. When unoccupied, the platform remains a sculpture defined by the possibility of activation, evoking art-historical precedents and 'isms'—particularly minimalism—while subtly challenging them. While the work is linked to a time of profound absence and grief, it radiates with joy, physicality and emotional openness, qualities that course through and reinforce the delicate complexities of Gonzalez-Torres' practice.