Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) was an artist born in Cuba who passed his adolescence in Puerto Rico and moved to New York at the end of the 70īs, where he would soon build an important and well recognized body of work before dying as a consequence of HIV infection. One of the characteristics of his work is that it weaves into the vocabulary of well established traditions in contemporary art (such as minimal art and conceptual art) a number of personal, everyday experiences and a series of concerns that are biographically informed. This Thesis takes as a point of departure de relationship maintained by the artist with his lover, Ross Laycock, in order to analize how this delicate round of negotiations is carried out in his photographs on paper, in his jigsaw puzzles and in his photostat pieces as a response to a conservative context, plagued by uncertainty. Our focus of this material brings up a number of recurrent themes, such a the impact of the AIDS epidemic, the relationship between the private and the public spheres and the difficulties of elaborating an adequate frame from which to develop a story relevant to a number of personal experiences prone to rejection within that context. 

These concerns carry along a critical apraisal of certain social norms: the elaboration of masculinity, the conception of the family and the weight of value judgement concerning what is considered strange and familiar (that is to say, themes aligned with that difficulty of constructing personal meaning under a period of time highly mediatized). Our investigation analizes how the works studied interweave these themes in order to understand how they negotiate strategically the artistīs personal agenda and thus better understand the ways in which they establish and redefine certain "rules of the game" which favor that interested process of producing meaning. In this way, the present Thesis analizes how these interventions establish a dialogue with the ambiguous generality that corresponds to a sound investment.