The Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Most everyone in San Francisco has a Felix Gonzalex-Torres poster in their house or at least rolled one up and stuck it under their arm on their last visit to the SFMOMA. If not a poster, you might have walked through his gold beaded curtain and felt like a kid for a moment. Looking through his work and thinking about what I've seen first hand, it's fair to say there's a magic to it. Who wouldn't want to be in any of those rooms or escape in thought of being inside an image on one of his posters? Because his work is so approachable and playful, it speaks to one of my favorite aspects of art, the dreamlike quality. Since dreams aren't rooted in our everyday reality and go beyond it, they aren't tied down or burdened with things that our regular lives tend to get interrupted by. Dreams can stay pure and beautiful because that's where they live and won't be pulled down from there. Dreams can also be a palette cleanser by clearing our heads of the mess we get consumed by. Once our palette is cleansed we can then go and look at different kinds of art with a freshness to see all of them. We have a greater capacity to concentrate on the more intellectual pieces and more willingness to adapt to unusual pieces.