AA Bronson
dal 6/2/2002 al 31/3/2002
Segnalato da
6/2/2002
AA Bronson
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge
Bronson, with Partz and Zontal, is among the first internationally recognized contemporary artists to produce artwork in a group structure. General Idea’s later collaborative works, produced in response to AIDS, are among the masterworks in the literature of this plague. General Idea was a unique, influential practitioner of a type of high-camp conceptualism in which performance strategies, punk-rock aesthetics, drag queen bravado, intellectual rigor, and political resistance were blended into an irresistible melange.
The MIT List Visual Arts Center is
pleased to announce the opening of
Mirror Mirror by AA Bronson, a
celebrated Toronto and NY- based
multimedia artist, on February 7,
2002. Bronson is the surviving
member of the legendary Canadian conceptual art
collective General Idea, and this is his first solo exhibition
in New England, since his 25-year collaboration in art and
life with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal was ended when they
died of AIDS in 1994.
In this exhibition, Bronson explores the crucial theme of
how to persevere and learn to flourish in the face of the
unavoidable tragedies of life. It includes photographs,
installation works, wall paintings, and video. Weaving
together concepts derived from such seemingly disparate
sources as Tibetan Buddhism and Post-Modernism, Bronson
uses the particulars of his own biography - professional
and personal - to address the universal issues of humanity.
Utilizing language taken from the Holocaust and our
knowledge of post-traumatic stress disorder, Bronson’s
works transport us from the specific traumas of his
personal loss, to the global tragedy of AIDS, to a beginning
understanding of the transient and illusory nature of life
and love. Employing dream narratives and conveying a
Buddhist understanding of perceived reality as an illusion,
Bronson's new photographs and objects transform crippling
tragedy into spiritual growth.
General Idea was a unique, influential practitioner of a type
of high-camp conceptualism in which performance
strategies, punk-rock aesthetics, drag queen bravado,
intellectual rigor, and political resistance were blended into
an irresistible mélange. Bronson, with Partz and Zontal, is
among the first internationally recognized contemporary
artists to produce artwork in a group structure. General
Idea’s later collaborative works, produced in response to
AIDS, are among the masterworks in the literature of this
plague. His partners’ influence on Bronson during their
lifetimes, as well as the legacy of their deaths, figure
prominently in the artist’s current work.
In his early small black and white photographs, made
before General Idea coalesced, Bronson depicts the messy
process of attempting to create a whole, coherent
identity. Employing the disorienting properties of convex
mirrors and other strategies, he presents his body as a
collection of disassociated fragments. Thirty years later,
he tackles issues of identity and loss from the perspective
of a survivor. Bronson bears testimony to great trauma and
spiritual right of passage in the documentation of the
deaths of his colleagues through a series of photographs
and journal and dream related texts. Felix, June 5, 1994 is
the striking centerpiece of the series, a larger-than-life
image of Partz taken shortly after his death. Enveloped in
the brightly colored and luxuriantly patterned bedclothes
that comforted him in illness with the television remote
control still in his hand, the contrast of Partz’s skeletal
face and unclosing dead eyes reveal the inescapable
reality of his passing and a sorrow too profound for words.
In Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Will Set You Free), Bronson
reinvents his use of the convex mirrors, installing the
mirrors in the gallery, so that the viewers are essentially
viewing themselves. The words Arbeit Macht Frei are
reproduced digitally, translocating the slogan which
originally appeared at the entrance to Auschwitz into
contemporary culture, and relating it to the work ethic in
North America. For the Canadian Bronson, the axiom, Work
will set you free, is a conspicuously American idea of
freedom.
Nayland and AA, June, 20, 2001 (coat), a video
collaboration with Nayland Blake, an American conceptual
artist, will be presented in the Bakalar Gallery through the
exhibition. The images of Blake’s and Bronson’s
cake-frosting each other’s beards and kissing, projected
with two monitors, explore the ideas of sexuality,
masculinity, food and nurturing, and the complexity of
multi-racial identity.
Most recently, AA Bronson has been awarded the Bell
Award in Video Art (2001). Other awards include The
Gershon Iskowitz Prize (1988), The Lifetime Achievement
Award from the City of Toronto (1993), the Banff Centre
for the Arts National Award (1993), and the Jean A.
Chalmers Award for Visual Arts (1994). Bronson’s work has
been shown in numerous places such as Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago, and The Balcony, Toronto, and
he is one of the participants in the 2002 Whitney Biennial,
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. General Idea
exhibited in private galleries and major museums in North
America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, and undertook
countless temporary public art projects around the world.
This exhibition, organized by the List Visual Arts Center,
will accompany the artist designed exhibition catalogue
with an introduction by LVAC curator, Bill Arning who is
organizing the exhibition.
MIT List Visual Arts Center
20 Ames Street Building E15, atrium level Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA
Gallery Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, Saturday, Sunday: 12 - 6pm Friday: 12 - 8 pm Closed Monday