When did those billboards start appearing in the Hudson Valley – the ones with the black background, the stark white font and that plain phrase centered dead in the middle? They all say the same thing:
“It’s just a matter of time.”
Deciphering the meaning is like a crow trying to crack a walnut.
It’s just a matter of time. Repeat it like a prayer. Thy will be done. It’s just a matter of time. We shall overcome. It’s just a matter of time. You can run but you can’t hide. It’s just a matter of time. You’ll get yours. We all will. It’s just a matter of time. Isn’t everything? It’s just a matter of time. Looks like she had her fun. It’s just a matter of time.
Originally conceived by Félix González-Torres, Cuban-born American artist of the conceptual, he set out to hijack the quintessentially American medium of choice for commercial messaging back in the late ’80s.
Billboard culture-jamming came naturally to González-Torres, but the meaning of the message lurks stubbornly beneath the surface.
It was in Hamburg, Germany, in 1992 where his cryptic message gained notoriety. Exhibited simultaneously on billboards around the city, the message shapeshifted according to the interpretation of those who read it.
Es ist nur eine frage der zeit, they said. It’s just a matter of time. Jawohl!
Ten years later, the billboards escaped the confines of the German metropolis. In 2002, an exhibition was held at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York, in tandem with Sadie Coles HQ, London. The message had gone transatlantic.
A month later the billboards appeared in Milan- – È Solo Una Questione di Tempo – simultaneously with satellite sites in Athens, in Berlin, in Dublin, in Tokyo and in Bogotá, in Cambridge and in Kirkwall, in Milan and in New Delhi, in the Orkney Isles and in Rio de Janeiro, in São Paulo and in Warsaw, in London and in Zurich, and yes, in New York.
Paris was left out. Quelle tragique! Ce n’est qu’une question de temps.
The message of Félix González-Torres truly was global, not in any computer or smartphone screen sense, but tactile and real. Even a farmer in the field detached from the modern world could read the message if he came upon it.
Like Shepard Fairey’s “Obey” campaign featuring the black-and-white, boxed-in face of Andre the Giant, the message took on a life of its own, reproduced ad-hoc, by stencil and sticker around the world, through a kind of real-life viral metastasis.
George Rodrigue is a more crass example, churning out his blue dogs over and over again for eternity, hanging them on the gallery walls of a storefront in New Orleans. Papering the world in Blue Dog posters. But don’t cry for Rodrigue. Painting the same dog over and over is apparently what the people want.
While Fairey attended the RISD (Rhode Island School of Art), González-Torres first went to Pratt. Rodrigue never did get his MFA.
But the repeating billboard message of González-Torres is not the only work the artist is known for.
There’s also “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), where the artist devised that a pile of brightly wrapped candy should be dumped in a corner of a gallery where the walls meet. These are González-Torres’ candy spills. Like the billboards, others can recreate the installation. While dimensions may vary, the artist specifies that 175 pounds is the ideal weight.
“Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), was an installation that featured two wall clocks set to the same time, and placed on the wall side by side. Over the course of an exhibition owing to mechanical differences, the ticking faces of the clocks fall out of sync.
And there was “Untitled” (Billboard of an empty bed), the photograph of the obviously slept-in bed that showed up around New York was blown up on posters and again, on billboards, with no commentary supplied.
But what does all this mean? The clocks, of course, speak for themselves. The candy pile depicted his longtime partner Ross Laycock, who died of AIDS-related causes. It was his portrait and ideal weight reproduced in the candy installation in the corner of the gallery and from which viewers were expected to take and leave candy. The bed in the photograph blown up and placed around New York City was slept in by two men, and though they were absent, they were very much there- the private world was made public at a time when even the consideration of gay men generated significant cultural angst. And the billboards. They were part of an installation called: Ethik und ästhetik im zeitalter von aids. Translated: Ethics and Aesthetics in Times of AIDS.
Subverting the medium, confounding the public, Félix González-Torres is no more. In 1996, he too died of AIDS-related causes.
In order to manifest the artist’s intention, the rules of how and where González-Torres’ billboards can be installed are laid out by the Félix Gonzales Torres Foundation in a series of constrictive tenets, which at first seem to serve a purpose similar to instructing 1930s housewives to add an egg to their Betty Crocker cake mix. (The cake didn’t need the egg, but it offered them the chance to contribute.)
But as manifesting the work is a kind of interaction between the dead artist and the living, who wish to do the man honor, ritualizing the manifestation of the billboard seems the only correct thing. If anyone could simply repaint a billboard message, there would be no authentic connection to the spirit of the enterprise.
As the tenets explain:
“It is essential that [the billboards] be installed in multiple public/outdoor locations. It is a priority that they are situated in varied locations and/or contexts where a broad cross-section of the general public would typically encounter billboards… When exhibited, the ideal number of public/outdoor billboard locations is twenty-four. The billboards are intended to be installed in at least six public/outdoor billboard locations. The billboard works exist whether or not they are physically manifest.” And so on.
As specified in the tenets, there are currently at least six roadside locations in the Hudson Valley confirmed where the viewer can wonder at or bask in the dark resonance of a temporary manifestation of morally significant art.
In Kingston, on Ulster Avenue, near the King’s Valley Diner. Off the 299 between Highland and New Paltz. Alongside the 9G in Hyde Park. Along Route 209 in Kerhonkson. On Main Street in Poughkeepsie on Route 208 in Montgomery and south of Kingston on the 9W between Esopus and Highland.
How long they will stay up is anyone’s guess.
Join the family! 
