Felix Gonzalez-Torres interviewed by Tim Rollins, essays by Susan Cahan and Jan Avgikos

Felix Gonzalez-Torres is best known for installations and public artworks that invite the viewer's direct participation. In this interview Gonzalez-Torres talks about his commitment to social change and his understanding of his role as an artist in effecting that change.

Gonzalez-Torres: “I wanted to make a show that would disappear completely. It had a lot to do with disappearance and learning. It was also about trying to be a threat to the art-marketing system, and also, to be really honest, it was about being generous to a certain extent. […] Freud said that we rehearse our fears in order to lessen them. In a way this “letting go” of the work – this refusal to make a static form, a monolithic sculpture, in favor of a disappearing, changing, unstable, and fragile form – was an attempt on my part to rehearse my fears of having Ross disappear day by day right in front of my eyes.”