MAURIZIO CATTELAN

INTERVIEWS
FELIX GONZALES TORRES
When people asked who was your public, you often replied that it was just one person Ross. Doesnt that
mean that you werent interested in the rest of the public?
No. You know, Ive said that sometimes as a joke, sometimes seriously. For most of the work I do,
I need the public to become responsible and activate the work. Otherwise its just another kind of
formalist exercise. But we are always shifting back and forth between the personal and the public.
One day I want to make something from what I read in the paper and the next day I want to make
a work about a memory I have of eating a delicious meal with my boyfriend in Italy. Public life is
private life. And I think at times my only public was Ross.
Once I met one of your old students in New York and he told me that you used to ask them this very same
question all the time.
Who is your public?
Yes. (laughs).
You know, that is better than trying to get some signature form or look or way of working. I think
the tone is about not having anything extra but only whats necessary. I believe with all my heart
in the economy of means.
You mean that youre interested in the physical form of Minimalism and not in its intentions?
Yes. Im fascinated by the minimalist work of the late 60s. There is a lot of memory in my work
but I want to stress that the formal aspects are very deliberate. I always wanted to work with
rubber how it smells, how it feels. But how could I, at this point in history? It had to have a
certain irony, a certain edge.
Like with Arte Povera?
Well, with Arte Povera the main focus was on materials and not so much on the public, on means
of distribution. I come from a school and from a generation that is more about distribution. It has
a lot to do with being influenced by feminism, and by people like Louise Lawler, Jenny Holzer,
and other women artists during the 70s and the 80s, who used videos, photographs, offset prints
on the walls and so forth. You know, we have to recognize that there was a valuable artistic
practice happening in the 80s, mostly by women, within the feminist camp. Work like Jenny
Holzers and Barbara Krugers had a very specific purpose, it was trying to shift the dominant
order. But things have changed. I make objects without language, but everything in culture
happens within language. Nothing happens outside of language. The dominant narrative is not
static. It changes very quickly. It requires new modes of contestation.
What were the 80s like for you?
What were the 80s like for you?
That was a scary time for me. It was as if we had no collective memory, no past. It renounced any
kind of history, any kind of involvement, any kind of judgement, it was just a massive excessive
production of huge paintings with a lot of splattered colour and tacky figures doing something in
the East Village, gentrifying the neighbourhood and doing painting late at night.
I live close to the East Village but I never had a studio there or anywhere else. I understand it was the same for
you.
Thats a funny thing. Yes, the only time I had a studio, I didnt make a single thing for six months.
I guess thats good. I saved the world from more unnecessary artworks. Ive always wanted a
studio, a studio that looked like an artists studio with all that stuff: all the lights and the stereo
music and the assistants. I never had a penny, so by the time I got around to having some money,
I realized I didnt really need a studio. It was a revenge, a sweet one.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Loverboy), 1989
courtesy: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Given your view about private and public, and the fact that you never had a studio, have you ever considered
working on an outdoor piece?
No. We tend to make a distinction between the inside and the outside. But sometimes, just
because a work is out there doesnt make it public. You know, a work inside a gallery, in a so-
called private space, will sometimes be more public because it can relate to the public much
more than anything that is outdoors. Some artists who do outdoor sculpture, they haul what is
usually a large thing outside, into a place where people have no reference at all to this kind of
thing. Its the difference between art in public and art for the public. I hope that the public can
have more interaction with my pieces. They are not an imposition, theyre small things, concerned
with how information is transformed into meaning.
But if public and private are so interconnected, where do you think this need to separate them comes from?
Someones agenda have been enacted to define public and private. Were really talking about
private property because there is no private space anymore. Our intimate desires, fantasies, and
dreams are ruled and interpreted by the public sphere.
You mean like on the Internet?
Internet included. The explosion of the information industry, and at the same time the implosion
of meaning. Meaning can only be formulated when we can compare, when we bring information
to our daily level, to our private sphere. Otherwise information just goes by. Which is what the
ideological apparatuses want and need. You give us thirty minutes and we give you the world.
A meaningless one. So public life is private life. In our culture, we live in a world of
interrelations. As Lenin said, everything is related to everything.
What memories do you have of your childhood between Cuba and the States?
(As if reading a list) 1957: born in Guaimaro, Cuba, the third of what would eventually be four
children. 1964: Dad bought me a set of watercolors and gave me my first cat. 1971: sent to Spain
with my sister Gloria, then went to Puerto Rico to live with my uncle. 1979: returned to Cuba to
see my parents after an eight-year separation. Moved to New York City. 1981: Parents escaped
Cuba during Mariel boat lift, my brother Mario and sister Mayda escaped with them
You were too little to remember Kennedy.
Yes, but Im a product of some of the programs John F. Kennedy started. I went to school because
of what that man started. Womanizers and drunks and all that stuff, guys with mob connections
made all these changes possible so that someone like me could get the loans and go to school.
How about your school days? What were your favorite toys?
My favorite were Minnie and Mickey; after that, the Flinstones and Pee-Wee Herman. I hate
Barbies. When I went to art school every queen from the Midwest had them; they always cut their
hair, painted them.
I was reading about Fidel Castros health conditions today. There are mixed reports. Some say he will probably
go back to power in a few weeks, some say he wont survive this year.
You know, the Right is very smart. Before they had Martians; well, we proved theres no life on
Mars. Then they said the Russians were ready to invade this country, but theyre not there any
longer. Fidel is sinking, so what is there left that we can have that is as visual and symbolic as that
art.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Loverboy), 1989
courtesy: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Why do you think people should see your art as the ultimate villain?
Well, there is more than one reason. My own sexuality was never revealed anywhere else. I
realized that I as something else that I didnt see at home, and later as I grew up I found out what
it was. It was hidden from me but I was able to find it. You know, when I had a show at the
Hirschhorn, Senator Stevens, who is one of the most homophobic anti-gay senators, said he was
going to come to the opening and I thought hes going to have a really hard time trying to explain
to his constituency how pornographic and homoerotic two clocks side by side are. He came there
looking for dicks and asses. There was nothing like that.
What if there was something more explicit? Whatd have you done?
Michelangelo said this beautiful thing when he was asked to paint out the private parts of all the
people that he put in the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. He told the Pope Yes, indeed, I
could fix the painting but could you fix the world and then painting will follow. Wow, that is all
you need.
I mean, what if hed have decided to censor the exhibition?
Theres always this thing about freedom of expression. But what freedom and what expression,
what are we putting out? When I see someone on the left talking about freedom of speech, I think
we are lost. Thats not what Im asking. Im not arguing for the truth, Im arguing for lying, really
lying, but with a sense of intelligence. Use their argument and turn it around for our purposes
and stop being so predictable. Theyre waiting for us to demonstrate because its all part of the
process. Its so clear that our strategy has to change.
So what was your first reaction to the invitation of representing the United States at the Venice Biennale?
Well, my first reaction was a very predictable leftist reaction, which more and more Im
questioning and finding very static and selfdefeating. At this point I do not want to be outside the
structure of power, I do not want to be the opposition, the alternative. Alternative to what, to
power? No, I want to have power. Its effective in terms of change. I want to be like a virus that
belongs to the institution. If I function like a virus, an imposter, an infiltrator, I will always
replicate myself together with those institutions. Money and capitalism and powers are here to
stay, at least for the moment. Its within those structures that change can and will take place. My
embrace is a strategy related to my initial rejection.
So youre not worried that they might destroy your work.
No. I have destroyed it already, from day one.
I know what you mean. Even within my work, I always tried to destroy myself, not just the others.
Exactly. The feeling is almost like when you are in a relationship with someone and you know its
not going to work out. From the very beginning you know that you dont really have to worry
about it not working because you simply know that it wont. I have control over it and this is
what empowers me. It is a very masochistic kind of power. I destroy the work before I make it.
But I get a lot of pleasure from jeopardizing my own career, my own way of thinking things, I
But I get a lot of pleasure from jeopardizing my own career, my own way of thinking things, I
think it has to do with reinventing myself. There has always been so much fragility.
Do you analyze yourself a lot?
No, I dont want to spell out everything that Im doing to myself, although Im always engaged in
these questions and answer sessions with myself. Thats why I dont make that much work
because, if I really ask a lot of questions, I wont make it. I say Why make it? and then its not
needed. But in the terms of the tone, I think it all has to do with going to extremes. I always enjoy
extremes. I always like the fringes. Or you might call it, the margins.
Dont you expect this exhibition to trigger a lot of memories in peoples mind?
No. People just dont remember. It is like Casablanca, where Humphrey Bogart said A long time
ago, last night. People dont remember last night.
So why doing it? What for?
(pause) Honestly, without skipping a beat: Ross.

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