In 1990, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, one of America’s most important and emotionally eloquent contemporary artists—who died of AIDS-related causes, in 1996, at the age of thirty-eight—made a simple but radical piece: a pile of fortune cookies, free for the taking, which was replenished when it was depleted. This meditation on the sweetness of life and the inevitability of loss is being re-created by some thousand people worldwide through July 5; images are online at the Web sites of the Andrea Rosen and David Zwirner galleries.
An Installation by Felix Gonzalez-Torres Honors Sweetness and Loss
The artist’s simple and radical piece—a pile of fortune cookies, free for the taking and replenished when depleted—is being re-created worldwide through July 5.
Photograph by Doan Ly for The New Yorker
