4. "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers), 1991

This piece invites the viewer to simultaneously witness and participate in Gonzalez-Torres’s mourning of Ross, as it represents how he watched Ross slowly fall out of sync with him as he battled against AIDS. As was previously discussed in “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), using the two clocks to represent himself and his partner also allows Gonzalez-Torres to memorialize their relationship, while also maintaining a distance that would enable him to explore AIDS “calmly and elegantly without the pain” of having to live it in his artwork (Rounthwaite 47). Once we realize this––whether that be from reading the placard or from learning about their background––it becomes difficult to continue to perceive this piece as simply being two office clocks falling out of sync with one another.

 

To refer back to his Robert Storr interview, Gonzalez-Torres discusses his experience with a homophobic senator who came to his show “looking for dicks and asses,” but was instead met with trying to explain how “pornographic” and “homoerotic two clocks side-by-side” were (Storr). And yet, in the same interview, he says that everything “has a sexual mission,” and that he wants his audience to “think twice” when they see his clocks (Storr). I think this contradiction is really fascinating and exemplifies the infiltration of the homoerotic quite well, as although his artwork is not overtly sexual or homoerotic, it is still very layered, and he is telling us that he wants us to really work toward finding our own conclusions about his work given its minimalistic style.