A Very Romantic Dam, Somewhere: Expanded Bodies in the Art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Abstract

Despite Felix Gonzalez-Torres repeatedly stating his art was produced for an “audience of one” – his lover, Ross Laycock – Laycock has been notably absent in previous studies of Gonzalez-Torres’ artworks. Using the Carl George, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Ross Laycock Archive as the basis of this study, I reestablish Laycock at the center of Gonzalez-Torres’ art practice, claiming that many of his artworks were made as a response to Laycock’s death from AIDS-related complications and his own impending death.Gonzalez-Torres’ art has often been interpreted as metaphorically engaging with the body. Informed by archival materials, it is possible to understand that Gonzalez-Torres was not only employing metaphors but instead attempting to find objects that he could invest with the credibility of a body so that he and Laycock could be re-embodied. This orchestration of existence, which I refer to as the “Expanded Body,” is the suspension of previously held conceptions of the body to reimagine both the form it takes and the way it occupies time. Acknowledging this is a retroactive analysis of Gonzalez-Torres’ art and that he may not have engaged with each of the theoretical ideas I propose does not diminish the credibility of this project, but instead, attests to the ways in which archival and personal material related to an artist can offer new ways to interpret artwork. This further enables the use of scholarship that was written or popularized after Gonzalez-Torres’ death. Rooted in feminist and queer studies, particularly those addressing queer futurity, this study examines how Gonzalez-Torres’ art can be seen as interrogating linear chronology to defy endings. In turn, this project addresses the codependency of desire, loss, and fantasy to establish the significance of extending the body in the early years of HIV/AIDS. At a time when many were facing intentional erasure, Gonzalez-Torres used his art to redefine what a human is, to question the limits of the body, and to reflect on its ever-changing nature. He faced his lover's diagnosis with hope, but also the very real knowledge that many were dying from AIDS. I argue that by imagining a future for himself and Ross, he conceived of a way in which the two could conquer the presence of hatred at the time as well as the disease. Ultimately, this project suggests that the concept of the expanded body allowed Felix Gonzalez-Torres to extend his time with Ross Laycock when their moments together were so threatened by a virus.