i always liked going to the modern art museum.
even as very little kid, art did something to me. it
planted itself in my brain, it took possession, as if a power, attached to the object by something else,
noticed my presence and seized the moment to deliver a message.
mysterious, weird and alien sculptures, sounds and pictures, these objects seemed to have a better
connection to my emotions than i did.
i like to think i did not see the art as things fabricated by hands, but as thoughts, feelings,
memories. as something that took form when it needed to.
a visit at the museum meant, that i could take a silver wrapped candy from the art pile. it was art,
and not only was i allowed to touch it, i was allowed to take it.
i felt seen, as a kid, as the original observer, as the one that had to carry all the things the
other pieces left in my head unasked.
the pile of silver wrapped candy, in the far corner of a giant white
room did not intrude.
it did not crash into my head, leaving unwanted things on it's way out. it waited for me, and it
waited with a gift of rest. and i took the candy, and only then it placed its feelings, its thoughts,
its memories.
this only really happened two times.
the next time my mother took me to the the museum, the candy pile wasn't there anymore.
i searched for it, the rooms looked too similar, imagined that there was just a room i missed, in
which the work would wait for me, i imagined that for years.
the art was gone.
the connection did not falter.
i still hold the lover boys in my heart, as they hold me.
"Untitled" (Lover Boys)
1991
Candies in silver wrappers, endless supply
Overall dimensions vary with installation
Ideal weight: 355 lb.
Ideal weight describes the combined ideal weight of Ross Laycock, artist and loving partner of Félix
González-Torres, and Félix himself, who was the creator of this work.
Ross was taken from us through AIDS on January 24 1991, as was Félix on January 9, 1996.