"Untitled" (Golden)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s diaphanous and ephemeral bead-curtain sculptures are among the defining works of his remarkable career. Designed for installation as a threshold within a space—defining a moment of transition—they physically engage the viewer, who must penetrate the cascading beads to navigate the space fully. “Untitled” (Golden) is one of the last curtain works that Gonzalez-Torres conceived before his death. The artist recognized the potential of the inexpensive, mass-produced gold beads; indeed, he possessed an uncanny ability to produce elegant and restrained forms out of otherwise common materials. The beads conjure at once the pop or hippie culture of the late 1960s and 1970s as well as the glitz of opulence. Usually connoting wealth, solidity, and permanence, gold is rendered here as its opposite: inexpensive, permeable, and transitory.