González-Torres’s practice incorporates a minimalist visual vocabulary and certain artworks that are composed of everyday materials such as strings of light bulbs, paired wall clocks, stacks of paper, and individually wrapped candies.

Examples of these contradictions include the way he structured courses as a professor,[10] wrote press releases and texts, gave lectures, participated in interviews, and created varying strategies for each body of work.

One particular example is the way Gonzalez-Torres structured a lecture on the occasion of a solo-exhibition of his work at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 1994.

[11] Following a slide show of various artworks and exhibitions in which his work was included, Gonzalez-Torres proceeded to read a prepared statement reflecting on the current national deficit, government budget allocations for public housing versus military spending, incarceration and poverty rates, and inequitable wealth distribution.

[12] He closed the lecture with a quote from a New York Times article that establishes a legacy of contention around the separation of church and state.

Over time the work has been interpreted through varying critical lenses, including: the subjective construction of histories,[13] questions of monumentality and attachment to permanency;[14] the profoundness of love and partnership, codes and resilience of queer love;[15] the role of ownership;[16] perceptions of value and authority;[17] discourse around death, loss, and the potentiality of renewal;[17] questions of display and conditions of reception,[18] notions of disidentification; the role and subversiveness of beauty;[19] the rewards and consequences of generosity;[20] arbitrary delineations between private and public selves/places;[21] social, political, and personal dimensions of the AIDS epidemic;[22] questions of established economic and political structures;[23] occupation of the margins and infiltration of centers of power;[24] the instability of language and what is connoted vs. denoted;[25] somatic responses/forms of knowledge;[26] etc.

[27] This is a theory that means an audience member is primed to have an individualized response to a performance that leads them to effect change in the world.

Images of birds in the sky are featured across many bodies of work in Gonzalez-Torres’s practice, including billboards, doubles, framed photographs, paper stack, pedestals/platforms, and puzzles.

These works include images and texts that pertain to politics, violence, consumerism, mass culture, and religion.

Strategies that identify and question the significance of modes of presentation for artworks can be traced throughout the artist’s practice.

The puzzles were received from the photo lab fully assembled with a piece of cardboard backing and sealed inside a fitted plastic bag.

[63][64] Across several bodies of work, starting as early as 1987, González-Torres employed a strategy, described by some as a “dateline,” wherein he included lists of various events/dates in a purposeful but non-chronological order.

In the body of photostat works, the events/dates are printed in white type on black sheets of photographic paper presented in basic frames with reflective glazing.

These lists of seeming non sequiturs prompted viewers to consider the relationships and gaps between the diverse references as well the construction of individual and collective identities and memories.

In a 1991 interview with Robert Nickas, González-Torres reflected on the titles of his artworks: “things are suggested or alluded to discreetly.

The candies covered the floor from one side of the room to the other and extended all the way to the back wall opposite the visitor.

In 2011, the same candy work, "Untitled" (Placebo), was installed at the Museum of Modern Art in two large rectangles divided by a walkway for visitors.

[68] At Roni Horn's 1990 solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, González-Torres encountered her sculpture "Forms from the Gold Field" (1980–82).

Viewers would come upon the work unexpectedly while walking the streets in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island City, and Manhattan.

The installation, Projects 34: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, was curated and organized by Anne Umland in her role as Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

"Untitled" (It's Just a Matter of Time) is a billboard originally exhibited in 1992 in Hamburg, reading "Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit."

In 1991 González-Torres began producing sculptures consisting of strands of plastic beads strung on metal rods,[76] which some have interpreted to include references to the organic and inorganic substances associated with battling AIDS.

The Foundation maintains extensive exhibition and image archives and makes them accessible to anyone interested in learning about Gonzalez-Torres's work.

In 2010 Artforum published an article by artist and critic Joe Scanlan titled "The Uses of Disorder" that took a darker look at the soft power and neoliberal economics at play in González-Torres's work.

[82] González-Torres's candy work "Untitled" (Portrait of Marcel Brient) (1992) sold for $4.6 million at Phillips de Pury & Company in 2010, a record for the artist at auction at the time.

[104] González-Torres staged many solo exhibitions, installations, and shows at galleries and museums in the United States and internationally during his lifetime.

[113] In 2007, González-Torres was selected as the United States' official representative at the Venice Biennale, curated by Nancy Spector.

The artist's previously controversial status influenced the 1995 decision to reject him for the Venice pavilion in favor of Bill Viola.

Artists Carol Bove, Danh Vo, and Tino Sehgal were chosen to curate the show's second half.

This work had first been executed posthumously as two outdoor pools embedded in the ground at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, in 2001 in conjunction with the group exhibition No es sólo lo que ves: pervirtiendo el minimalismo, but the artist had originally envisioned the pools to be installed indoors.