FÉLIX GONZÁLEZ-TORRES

A gold-flecked fantasy of oceanic candy

By CHRISTINE LIU

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With a complex agenda from conceptual rigor to the AIDS Crisis, artist Félix González-Torres wielded everyday materials—a ton of confections, in this case—for artistic expression in the late '80s and early'90s. His work Untitled (Placebo - Landscape - for Roni), 1993 unfurls in the Harvard University's Carpenter Center, the only building built by Le Corbusier in the United States. It shall bring the visions of two utopian-minded artists together in a formidable architectural and interactive piece.

Exhibition curator Helen Molesworth, the Harvard University Art Museums' Maisie K. and James R. Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art, helps decipher this enormously caffeinated installation.

Why did you choose this particular piece within González-Torres' body of work?

It is one of the largest of Félix González-Torres' candy pours. González-Torres had a little bit of a dictum that "less is more," so we wanted to do one very physically and visually impressive piece.

What's the scope of the pour?

He doesn't dictate the size, but there's an ideal weight. There will be 1200 lbs of candy. It's a coffee candy in a gold foil wrapper, and he specified the type of candy and the type of wrapper and the weight. But the actual size of the pour is up to the person installing it. [Viewers] may take the candy and eat it, and the logic of the piece is that it has to be perpetually replenished. What the museum needs to do is to make sure there's approximately the same amount of candy [throughout the exhibition].

So what sorts of ideas emerge from this landscape of candy on the floor?

It does a lot of things. One is that you have a group of objects, some of which are being diminished (taken away by chance), but the artist puts the onus on the museum to make sure that there's a real constant presence. The viewer is confronted with a variety of questions: Should I take the candy? Can I take the candy? If I take the candy, what do I do with it? Do I ingest it and sort of make it a part of myself, or make it disappear? Do I save it—like if you picked up a shell at the beach and it becomes some sort of souvenir. If you have any Catholicism in your background, you know a very poignant moment in every Mass where the communion wafer is taken. There's a religious (or at least spiritual) element of taking a ritual gift and eating it, ingesting it. All those sorts of things are there.

One can only hope they're tasty.

Yeah, they're super good! They're hard candy—they don't have a soft center or anything, they're kind of like coffee, but a little milky. I really like them.

FÉLIX GONZÁLEZ-TORRES: UNTITLED (PLACEBO - LANDSCAPE - FOR RONI), 1993

OPENS THURS.11.8

HARVARD UNIVERSITY CARPENTER CENTER

24 QUINCY ST, HARVARD SQ., CAMBRIDGE

617.495.3251

VES.FAS.HARVARD.EDU