3. "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991

This piece engages us as witnesses and participants in mourning Ross because it encourages us to take what is supposed to represent his body. First, we must acknowledge that Gonzalez-Torres did not begin making his candy spills until after Ross’s death (Rounthwaite 42). In his Robert Storr interview, he says that he created the candy spills “to control the pain” of losing Ross (Storr). By creating an installation that appears impersonal and cheerful even, Gonzalez-Torres can memorialize Ross while also maintaining necessary distance to prevent himself from becoming exhausted when speaking about his work. Dr. Adair Rounthwaite corroborates this in her “Split Witness” essay, in which she argues that his candy spills allow him the distance to explore AIDS “calmly and elegantly without the pain” of having to live through it in his artwork (Rounthwaite 47). Therefore, it is not until we read the placard that we realize that this work is a memorial for Ross.

 

Similarly, it is the ambiguity of this piece that allows the homoerotic to infiltrate the space. In his “Spit or Swallow” essay, Dr. Theo Gordon explores the concept of orality in Gonzalez-Torres’s candy spills. Although Gordon does not consider oral participation to be “an intrinsically queer act” (Gordon 784), he argues that the titles of Gonzalez-Torres’s artwork act as “signifiers” that make “the viewer [realize] that they are sucking on representations of queer bodies” (Gordon 784). Given that Ross was a gay man, by eating and sucking on what is supposed to represent his body, Gonzalez-Torres is able to facilitate the infiltration of the homoerotic in his installations.