FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES — Three-Part Exhibition, Andrea Rosen Gallery / Massimo De Carlo / Hauser & Wirth, 2016

Original exhibition announcement and private-view invitation. Offset printing in colour and black-and-white on white coated paper. Three-panel concertina fold; six printed panels. 23 × 16 cm folded; 72 × 16 cm unfolded. Unsigned. Curated by Julie Ault and Roni Horn. Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Massimo De Carlo, Milan; Hauser & Wirth, London, 2016.

Original folded announcement produced for the coordinated three-part presentation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work across New York, Milan and London. This was not a conventional retrospective. Each exhibition was conceived as an autonomous chapter within a larger structure, allowing a different body of work to be reconsidered through its installation and relationship to the venue. The exhibitions ran at Andrea Rosen Gallery from 3 May to 18 June, Massimo De Carlo from 20 May to 20 July, and Hauser & Wirth from 27 May to 30 July 2016.

The New York presentation concentrated on Gonzalez-Torres’s textual portrait works, in which personal events and public history form mutable lines of painted language. Milan brought together bead curtains and paired mirrors, foregrounding passage, touch, separation and return. London focused on works made in 1991, the year his partner Ross Laycock died, including sealed photographic puzzles, doubled mirrors, hanging lightbulbs and the blue-tinted mirror “Untitled” (Fear).

Julie Ault had worked with Gonzalez-Torres through Group Material, while Roni Horn maintained a close artistic and personal dialogue with him. Their relationship to the artist was central to the project: rather than preserving one definitive interpretation, they treated each installation as another permitted manifestation of a practice structured around change, participation and curatorial responsibility.

The announcement reproduces three works associated with the project: “Untitled” (Last Letter), 1991; the bead curtain “Untitled” (Chemo), 1991; and an installation view of the wall-based “Untitled”, 1989. The reverse reduces the project to three typographic fields: artist, curators and participating galleries. Its narrow uppercase lettering, extensive white space and alternating photographic panels give the document the visual restraint of Gonzalez-Torres’s own exhibition language.

The construction is unusually exact. Three panels correspond to three cities. Each fold separates one location while retaining the project as a continuous sheet. The announcement does not simply record the exhibitions; it produces a portable version of their distributed structure. Image, name, venue and date travel together as a temporary exhibition assembled through paper.

This is the original folded announcement rather than the separate 40-page softcover catalogue issued by Andrea Rosen Gallery for the New York presentation.

Condition: very good. Light handling and faint surface marks, with minor wear along folds and edges consistent with circulation and storage. No tears or inscriptions visible. Supplied folded in its original configuration.