Reconciling the Perfect Lovers

One of the troubles I am having in my research has to do with identifying contemporary seductive artworks. Vicky Civera’s Sue?ɬ±o Amargo has been the only piece secured in that position. However, having been thinking about for so long has also made it become a little bit of an obsession and I am conscious that the study could become somewhat biased if I don’t find a way out.

The artist that moves the most is still Felix Gonzalez-Torres. His takable sweets and printed papers sparkled my thoughts on precarious art, which then crystallized in the form of an MA dissertation. When I moved away from ideas of transparency, reproducibility and transportability, I also left Felix Gonzalez-Torres behind.

Last night, I had an epiphany, whilst thinking about my forthcoming presentation on seductive objects. I have been looking at Beverly Semmes and E V Day‘s works trying to extract contemporary seductiveness out of them. And I wasn’t convinced at all. Where are these works leading me astray from? Where to?

I had resolved to take them out of the talk completely but still felt there was a gap that I wasn’t addressing. It is then when the image of the Perfect Lovers appeared in my head. In the animation played by my brain (lying in bed, my eyes were closed), those 2 clocks were in my office wall. I couldn’t avoid looking at them, waiting for the second-counting hand of one of them to stop while the other carried on.

Google-ing the piece today, I found that Portable Temporary Services had decided to approximately recreate Gonzalez-Torres’ work. Moreover, they give you instructions on how to do it yourself.

Can precariousness be seductive? Can precarious art lead one astray from the art establishment’s right behaviour?