FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES | "Untitled" (Welcome)

Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Collection of Eileen and Michael Cohen, New York
Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, Carte Blanche Philippe Segalot, 8 November 2010, Lot 22
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

New York, Andrea Rosen Gallery, Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Every Week There Is Something Different, May - June 1991
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Girlfriend in a Coma), April - June 1996
Brussels, Wiels Center for Contemporary Art; Basel, Fondation Beyeler; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form, January 2010 - April 2011, pp. 58, 173, 176, 197, 209, 238, 516, 517, 557, 587, 617, 652, illustrated in color

Kay Larson, “Six Threads,” Atelier, no. 776, October 1991, illustrated
Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Robert Nickas, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres. All the Time in the World (interview)," Flash Art, November/December 1991, pp. 86-88, illustrated
Dennis Dahlquist, “Tillbaka till framtiden,” Expressen, 24 November 1992, p. 5
Exh. Cat., Milwaukee Art Museum, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1993, n.p.
Eric Troncy, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Placebo,” Art Press, June 1993, p. 35
Exh. Cat., The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (and traveling), Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1994, pp. 14-16
Nancy Princenthal, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Multiple Choice,” Art + Text, May 1994, p. 44
Dietmar Elger, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Catalogue Raisonné, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997, cat. no. 130, p. 75, illustrated
Julie Ault, Ed., Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Göttingen 2006, pp. 38-39, illustrated in color
Sacha Bronwasser, “Gloednieuw en vers van de bakker,” Volkskrant,  22 January 2010, p. 14
Joe Scanlan, “The Uses of Disorder,” Artforum, No. 48, February 2010, pp. 162-169, illustrated 
Olivier Mignon, “Le Fils Prodigue.” L’Art Même, 1 March 2010, pp. 38-39, illustrated
Matthew Bowman, "On Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form,” Rebus 5, Summer 2010, n.p. 
Gesine Borcherdt, "Die Gegenwärtigkeit der Geister," Artnet, 8 February 2011, n.p. 
Swantje Karich, “Vom Unbehagen an der Welt,” FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 February 2011, n.p. 
Michael Hierholzer, "Lebenslicht und Massenware," FAZ Rhein-Main Zeitung, 28 February 2011, n.p. 
Sung Won Kim and Geun-jun Lim, "Special Artist: Felix Gonzalez-Torres," Art in Culture August 2012, pp. 116-135, illustrated
Alison Green, When Artists Curate: Contemporary Art and the Exhibition as Medium, London 2017, n.p. 

“Untitled" (Welcome) is a seminal work within Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ oeuvre, a telltale example of his ability for profundity within a seemingly minimalist presentation. It is composed of common materials such as the industrial ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp; the geometric arrangement takes from the sculptures of Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt. However, the work can also be understood as personally poignant.  Here, Gonzalez-Torres is at the height of his powers: able to imbue his personal language while simultaneously referencing the art historical canon. Joseph Cornell’s embedding of private language as well as late-career Picasso’s wresting with mortality further come to mind. The importance of “Untitled" (Welcome) within Gonzalez-Torres’ tragically short career is signified by its inclusion in Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Girlfriend in a Coma at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France, in 1996 and Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form, which was exhibited in 2010 at the Wiels Center for Contemporary Art, Brussels, Belgium and the Foundation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland and in 2011 at the MMK Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany. The present work consists of approximately eighty identical black rubber doormats. They are arranged in four ascending stacks, with the highest stack adjacent to a wall. While sharing the same concept of repeated material as in his paper stacks, “Untitled" (Welcome) is not meant for distribution and dissemination amongst the audience. Interspersed amongst the stacks are everyday items serving as forms of mementos: a playing card, a key, two bars of soap, some scribbled notes, and several photographs. Whereas the doormats are public and impersonal, these trinkets placed between them resemble the intimacies of one’s life and the corresponding memories.

In an interview with Robert Nickas in which they discuss the present work at length, Gonzalez-Torres also hones in on how “Someone’s agenda has been enacted to define ‘public’ and ‘private.’ We’re really talking about private property because there is no private space anymore. Our intimate desires, fantasies, and dreams are ruled and interpreted by the public sphere. There is a lot of memory involved in my work, but I want to stress that the formal aspects are very deliberate. As for the welcome mat piece, I’m fascinated by the minimalist work of the late sixties, and I always wanted to work with rubber...how it smells, how it feels.” (Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Robert Nickas, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: All the Time in the World” (interview), in Felix Gonzalez-Torres, edited by Julie Ault, New York 2006, p. 39) Gonzalez- Torres’ assessment of the disappearance of the private sphere is even more topical today, nearly thirty years after this interview was conducted, with our increasing reliance on present-day technologies and media.

Amidst the photographs of the everyday lie several images which allude to the circumstances of the historical moment in which the work was made and specifically the AIDS epidemic. Namely, in one, a Teddy bear is depicted being gripped by an arm extending into the frame (see fig. 1). Visible on this arm is a lesion: a telltale sign of the disease. Here, the work might be situated as a commentary on the transience of the human condition, Gonzalez-Torres perhaps wreslting with his own mortality.


In his art, Gonzalez-Torres sought to address the links by which we all, as humans, could relate. “Untitled" (Welcome) is a prime example of this exploration. The arrangement of the mats suggests the literal ascension of steps to a door. In a metaphorical reading, one is inclined to believe this to be the bridge between life and life; however, it may not be an ascension so much as a connection between two disparate bodies. Perhaps these spheres are intended to be viewed as the public and private, or the sacred and profane. Indeed, this ambiguity in meaning is the very essence of the beauty of "Untitled" (Welcome): what the viewer takes away from it is entirely their own, subject to their own experiences. By sharing ambiguous totems from his own life, Gonzalez-Torres ensures that we engage with the work via the nuance of individualized personal experience that unites us all.



This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.