In the time of consumption: Félix González-Torres

• Grant number: 11/13106-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2011
• End date: May 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Art Fundamentals and Criticism
• Principal Investigator: Agnaldo Aricê Caldas Farias
• Grantee: Julia Buenaventura Valencia de Cayses
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The subject of this research project is the work of the plastic artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Cuba 1957- USA 1996), from the perspective of one of the main discussions of the eighties: the role of the public in contemporary cities; spaces in which there is a stark contrast between the numbers of inhabitants and the possibilities of people meeting each other. This fact, which has recently become extreme, certainly has old roots: the phantasmagoria proper of the capitalist market, a phenomenon that-noticed by Marx from the factories and studied by Benjamin from the shop windows-consists of the fiction that it is objects, and not people, that are responsible for weaving social relations. In the eighties, in the midst of an exacerbated market, many artists started looking for alternatives: works capable of generating meeting places that escaped the market to establish connections between people. And it was precisely at this moment that Felix Gonzalez-Torres started to develop his work. However, and this is the hypothesis of this project, at a certain point the artist abandoned that path, stopped looking for alternatives to escape the mediations of the market and instead decided to operate within its limits, playing with the mechanism that makes any market possible in itself: the relationship of equality and equivalence.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

CAYSES, Julia Buenaventura Valencia de. Properties without goods: from lots of Gordon Matta-Clark to the manifestations of Félix González-Torres. 2014. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU/SBI) São Paulo.