At first glance, if you said that these just look like two store-bought clocks, you’d be right. But this piece, like most art, just needs to be unpacked.

The clocks are meant to start in the same position, and over the course of time, will gradually fall out of sync - as all clocks do. Gonzalez-Torres’ piece suggests that, just like these clocks, often couples find themselves falling out of sync. The beauty in this is that the title remains the same. Despite it all, they remain ‘perfect lovers’, to say that even when two who are in love fall out of sync, doesn’t mean that they’re any less perfect for each other.

The piece is made more powerful when you find out that Felix’s partner died of AIDS during the epidemic in the US, and Felix himself passed a few years later - as if his clock ticked just a little bit slower.

- Sidedish Projects