Crystal Britt (she/her)
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itscrystalbritt.bsky.social
Crystal Britt (she/her)
@itscrystalbritt.bsky.social
72 followers 38 following 19 posts
🤓 LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker)
💖 Partner 🤟🏼 Parent
📚 Information Sponge + Feminist Loud Mouth 🫡
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itscrystalbritt.bsky.social
I couldn’t believe I got to see this installation last weekend at the Chicago Art Institute. It was so moving.
A pile of wrapped shiny hard candies of all rainbow colors sit in a pile against a white wall. It’s an art plaque that reads: Felix Gonzalez-Torres. American, born Cuba, 1957-1996. “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in LA). Candies, in various colored wrappers, endless supply. Ideal weight 175 lbs. Felix Gonzalez-Torrez produced meaningful and restrained sculptural forms out of common materials. "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) consists of an ideal weight of 175 pounds of shiny, commercially distributed candy. The work's physical form and scale change with each display, affected by its placement in the gallery as well as audience interactions. Regardless of its physical shape, the label lists its ideal weight, likely corresponding to the average body weight of an adult male, or perhaps the ideal weight of the subject referred to in the title, Ross Laycock, the artist's partner who died of complications from AIDS in 1991, as did Gonzalez-Torres in 1996. As visitors take candy, the configuration changes, linking the participatory action with loss-even though the work holds the pote Crystal’s hand holds a purple wrapped candy. A multicolored like of candy lays in a pile against a white wall.
July 4, 2023 at 2:32 AM