"Untitled", 1994
Five gelatin silver prints in artist's frame. 25 1/2 x 32 7/8 in. (64.8 x 83.5 cm) each; 25 1/2 x 176 3/8 in. (64.8 x 448 cm) overall. This work is from an edition of two plus one artist's proof. A Certificate of Authenticity issued by The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation in 2009 will accompany this work.

PROVENANCE Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Lambert Art Collection, Geneva
EXHIBITED Hannover, Sprengel Museum, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, June 1 - August 24, 1997 (another example exhibited); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, September 6 - November 16, 1997 (another example exhibited); Esslingen,Villa Merkel, Galerie der Stadt Esslingen am Neckar, Photography as Concept: 4th International Foto-Triennale, June 28 - September 6, 1998 (another example exhibited); Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, September 12 - November 1, 1998 (another example exhibited); Seattle, Henry Art Gallery, the University of Washington, June 14 - September 21, 2003; West Palm Beach, Norton Museum of Art, October 18 - December 28, 2003; Tampa Museum of Art, January 25 - April 11, 2004; and Chicago Cultural Center, April 24 -June 27, 2004, Crosscurrents at Century's End: Selections from the Neuberger Berman Art Collection (another example exhibited); San Francisco, Fraenkel Gallery, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, April 1 - May 29, 2004  
LITERATURE N. Spector, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, New York, 1995, p. 40 (detail illustrated); D. Elger, ed., Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Catalogue Raisonné, Ostfildern-Ruit,1997; p. 133, no. 266 (illustrated); M. Danoff and H. L. Steiger, ed., Crosscurrents at Century's End: Selections From the Neuberger Berman Art Collection, New York, 2003, pp. 48, 49 (illustrated)

"As an artist whose work exemplifies understatement, Gonzalez-Torres employs an extreme economy of visual means for the dual purposes of enticing and challenging his viewers. The seduction occurs at the level of its pure formal beauty; the simple elegance of the work invites contemplation, even reverie. 'Beauty' he claims, 'is a power we should reinvest with our own purpose.' The work's provocation lies in its seeming open-endedness, its refusal to assert a closure of meaning,"  (N. Spector, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, New York, 1995, p. 17).     In the present lot, Felix Gonzalez-Torres creates a poetic meditation on the beauty, fragility and fleeting nature of life. Each of the five framed gelatin silver prints that comprise this work contains images of different groupings of birds, so small, and almost overexposed, that they nearly disappear into the infinite sky they inhabit, in a move between being individual entities and a part of the whole. The openness of these images invites a myriad of readings from the viewers who the artist invites to complete the piece by projecting their own thoughts onto the spare compositions.