This presentation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled” (Loverboy) (1989) at Dia Beacon marks the artist’s first acquisition and exhibition at Dia. Consisting of sheer light-blue curtains installed in the linear expanse of the east gallery, which is lined by Robert Irwin–designed windows featuring shifting glazes, “Untitled” (Loverboy) emphasizes the existing architectural tension between transparency and opacity. In the spirit of Postminimalism, the medium is responsive to its immediate environment as it takes on a corporeality and relationality in concert with shifting atmospheric conditions. “Untitled” (Loverboy) introduces a queer politics and sensibility to the space, unfolding at the intersection of private and public, interior and exterior, and domestic and institutional.
From 1988 to 1989, at Dia’s SoHo spaces, Gonzalez-Torres participated in artist collective Group Material’s open-forum exhibition Democracy—then composed of Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, and Gonzalez-Torres—surrounding four critical concerns of U.S. democracy: education, electoral politics, cultural participation, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres is organized by Jordan Carter, curator and co–department head, and Humberto Moro, deputy director of program, with Liv Cuniberti, curatorial assistant.