"Untitled" (Arena)

"Untitled" (Arena) is both a sculpture made of sixty light bulbs in porcelain sockets strung on an electrical cord and a set for a multimedia participatory performance. It was originally installed as a ceiling-hung square, draped from four hooks to create a canopy under which couples were invited to dance. The artist provided a cassette player with a tape of a waltz. Today, "Untitled" (Arena) can be displayed either as a dance canopy, or as a sculpture in any arrangement of the installer’s choosing: hung from the ceiling, draped across a wall, piled on the floor, etc. The ability to be reconfigured by its exhibitor challenges accepted notions of sculpture as a fixed object shaped by the artist’s hand.

Gonzalez-Torres made twenty-four light string works between 1992 and 1994. Recalling the lights strung over one’s backyard or terrace, they may evoke summer nights gone by. Created in the midst of the AIDS crisis, they model a different kind of remembrance, even mourning, that is not despairing but reflective and open. "Untitled" (Arena), particularly when installed as a dance canopy, is the artist’s most poignant evocation of this vision, a memorial that proposes joyful togetherness as a necessary response to loss.