Felix Gonzalez-Torres

museum in progress
The Billboard, 1991–2002

Felix Gonzalez-Torres,
"Untitled" (Portrait of Austrian Airlines), 1993

museum in progress started in 1991 its exhibition project Das Plakat (The Billboard) in cooperation with Gewista, an agency for outdoor advertising, displaying posters up to 15 meters long at around 200 different Vienna locations. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who had already made use of this medium in public space a number of times, addressed in his 1993 contribution one of the sponsors of museum in progress, Austrian Airlines. All of the destinations the airline had flown to since its foundation are listed in words, including the year when these destinations first were taken up into the itinerary. This is both an historical review and a mental map that traces Austrian Airlines’ sphere of action (and thus also by implication the places not included). Gonzalez-Torres’s work is characterized by the evocation of memories and dreams, but without making use of the most obvious strategies of illustration in pictures.

Gonzalez-Torres' contribution to The Billboard will be shown again in the exhibition Die Grenzen unserer Welt (The Limits of Our World) as part of Enjoy — the mumok Collection in Change. The work can be seen in the exhibition itself as well as on various billboards and advertising columns in Vienna, for example on Franz-Josefs-Kai, Getreidemarkt, Porzellangasse, Landstraßer Hauptstraße, Sechshauserstraße, Schlickplatz, Lerchenfelder Gürtel, and Universitätsring.

Naoko Kaltschmidt

Further information on museum in progress.