Felix Gonzalez-Torres in the eighth edition of Sonora 128

The eighth edition of Sonora 128 presents the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (1995). During January and February of 2018, the black-and-white photo of a bird that goes up the flight appears simultaneously in six advertising spaces of the metropolitan area of Mexico City. In a final gesture of departure, the image is dispersed by the urban environment; what once was a fixed spectacular, takes off in the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, dissolves in the city and celebrates both the presence as the absence. The spectaculars of Felix Gonzalez-Torres are mutable pieces. With the idea of ​​movement, flow and change, they are manifested through the landscape of the city, multiplied, always in at least six locations. This work allows a varied population to meet them in different social contexts, at the same time it can suggest questions about notions of urban landscape and how and who occupy the public spaces.

Throughout his career, Gonzalez-Torres's commitment to social and political causes stimulated his interest in the overlap of public and private life. According to some scholars, his aesthetic project was related to Bertolt Brecht's epic theater theory: creative expression transforms the viewer from an inert receptor to an active and reflective observer and motivates social action. The extension of the Gonzalez-Torres project increases the original territory of Sonora 128, and transforms its scope around Mexico City. Since its inception in March 2016, Sonora 128 has been an expression of experimental energy outside the white cube characteristic of kurimanzutto. Throughout two years of programming, the work of eight artists has been presented in parallel with satellite exhibitions, conversations and performances on the corner of Avenida Sonora and Nuevo León in the Condesa neighborhood.

The initiative was supported with the collaboration of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and the Andrea Rosen Gallery.

The piece can be seen during January and February 2018 in the following six locations in Mexico City:

Sonora Avenue 128, Hipódromo Condesa, 06100

Gob. Agustín Vicente Eguía 18, San Miguel Chapultepec, 11850

Viaduct Tlalpan 83, Huipulco, 14370

The Camino Real de Toluca 415, José María Pino Suárez, 01140

Avenida de las Torres 188, Urban Area Ejidal Santa María, Aztahuacan, 09570

Isabel La Católica Street 330, Obrera, 06800

About the artist

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was born in Guáimaro, Cuba in 1957. He grew up in Puerto Rico before moving to New York where he obtained a degree in visual arts from the Pratt Institute in 1983 and a master's degree from the International Center of Photography in 1987. Throughout his life, Felix Gonzalez-Torres was the center of several individual exhibitions, including Felix Gonzalez-Torres Traveling (1994), Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC and The Rainassance Society at the University of Chicago, and a retrospective organized by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1995) which traveled to the Galician Center for Contemporary Art in Santiago de Compostela and to the ARC-Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris. In 2010-11, Wiels Contemporary Art Center in Brussels; Fondation Beyeler, in Basel and Museum fur Modern Kunst, in Frankfurt, received the six-part retrospective Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Specific Objects without Specific Form”. His work has been included in hundreds of group exhibitions around the world. Gonzalez-Torres posthumously represented the United States at the 52nd Venice Biennial in 2007. He died in Miami on January 9, 1996.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled (1995)

Sonora 128

kurimanzutto

+52 55 52 56 24 08

www.kurimanzutto.com