Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects Without Specific Form

A special talk and book event to celebrate the release of Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects Without Specific Form was held at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel on June 15, 2017. Elena Filipovic and Tino Sehgal were present in conversation about Gonzalez-Torres's work, the structure of the exhibition, and the publication.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects Without Specific Form documents the groundbreaking retrospective curated by Elena Filipovic with the artists Danh Vo, Carol Bove, and Tino Sehgal that traveled to Wiels Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, Fondation Beyeler in Basel, and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt in 2010 and 2011.

Organized by Wiels Contemporary Art Centre in collaboration with the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, the exhibition offered visitors the possibility of finding a new interpretation of Gonzalez-Torres's work with each visit. Following the installation of a retrospective version of the exhibition at each institution by Elena Filipovic, an artist whose practice has been informed by Gonzalez-Torres's work was invited to entirely re-install the show halfway through its duration. Danh Vo's version was presented at Wiels, Carol Bove's at the Fondation Beyeler, and Tino Sehgal's at the Museum für Moderne Kunst. Through this structure, the exhibition evolved into several different forms—none being the definitive one.

The publication has been years in the making as Elena Filipovic and the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation worked together to find the best ways to present the complexities and nuances of the exhibition. The book includes installation views of each version of the show and an illustrated checklist with images of the artworks in every instance of their installation. The structure of the publication allows the reader to see the immensely different ways the artworks can be installed, as well as how context acted on and through each piece during the cycle of exhibitions.