"We must remember that the sick, the disabled, even the dead are among us. They are part of our community, our history, our continuity. They are our fellow citizens in this dream city."1
Without any indulgence or sentimentality, AA Bronson`s opus imparts the probably last taboos of our time: sickness, loss and death. Being the only survivor of the legendary Canadian artists` circle General Idea (1969-1994), founded in Toronto, Bronson uses artistic means for handling the inevitable and gathering fresh strength out of it. After his partners` Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz deaths due to AIDS in 1994 and the loss of a symbiotic artistic and economic basis, Bronson started looking for his own identity, for "his body`s limits as an individual organism", detached from the community. After General Idea`s end, AA Bronson left the world of mass media, consumerism and glamour, as well as the former style of their common works, characterized by sharp irony and carelessness. In Robert Indiana`s famous LOVE-picture (1966), they had exchanged those four letters for the letters "AIDS", which reveals perfectly their ideas and anticipates, in the late eighties already, the circle`s tragedy ending in its decay.
In his individual opus, AA Bronson deals with the similarity of the effects of the Holocaust and AIDS on their victims. In this way, he creates a bridge from personal nightmare to a general message concerning global human disaster. Bronson`s oeuvre expresses itself in a large diversity of media: photography, installations, objects, videos, performances or texts, all in a stringent manner. Very often, he refers to historical forms of art known as "formulas of pathos" for representing death, grief and transitoriness: still life, triptych and tombstone. Knowing about human deficiency, AA Bronson approaches the most appealing subjects - love and death - with his clear and touching work.
Works (selection):
Jorge, February 3 (1994/2000): Three boards show photographs of Jorge Zontal, already marked by the signs of AIDS. According to Zontal`s own wish, AA Bronson had taken the photos one week before his death. Jorge was blind, then. The imagination of his own physiognomy reminded him of photos taken of his father after being released from the concentration camp of Auschwitz. In an attached text, Bronson tells about his friend`s wish to document that resemblance, that "…, similarity between genes and disasters. Since then I understand, how seldom it happens in history that whole communities get extinct whereas the surrounding communities remain untouched. The gays suffered the same losses during the late eighties and nearly the whole nineties."
The three large boards remind of a triptych, a classical manner of presenting the Crucifixion in Christian art. The association with suffering and death is obvious.
Felix, June 5, 1994 (1994/98): One of AA Bronson`s most upsetting works shows Felix Partz, more than life-size, shortly after his death. Arranged as a still life, ready to welcome visitors, wrapped in colourful sheets, Partz is lying in his bed, TV remote control, cassette recorder and cigarettes at his side. Death marks his face which reminds of a skull, for his eyes could not be closed due to an extreme emaciation. So, Felix, June 5, 1994 does not merely document Bronson`s personal tragic fate and the horror AIDS meant for gay men, but it is a general "memento mori", a recollection of inescapable death.
Mirror Sequences (1969-1970): In this early series, AA Bronson devotes himself to reflected images and photography as a mean of self definition and identification of one`s self as a homogeneous individual. A convex mirror diffuses this illusion and points at the disparity, which is better able to reflect the real non-homogeneous self-experience. With our own eyes, we are neither able to comprehend completely our own body, nor to see ourselves in the same way as others see us. Bronson reacts to that fact by putting himself into the picture from different angles, using a convex mirror and a camera.
Arbeit Macht Frei (2001): Thirty years later, AA Bronson resumes his convex mirror idea and arranges - from different angles - the inscription "Arbeit macht frei" ("Labour makes free"). With these words from the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp, Bronson displays the extinction of complete communities regarded as unwanted or inconvenient. By its mirrors` effects, this work captures the onlooker and puts his image - if only for a short time and in a distorted, diffused way - in context with an ideology that prepared a genocide.
Profile:
AA Bronson: Born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1946. He lives and works in Toronto and New York. From 1969 to 1994 he was member of the artists` circle General Idea. AA Bronson was awarded a lot of prizes, among them: two OAAG Awards (best exhibition installation and best artist`s book) for AA Bronson: The Quick and the Dead in 2004; The Chalmers Fellowship in 2003; second place in the category Best Monographic Museum Show for the exhibition Mirror Mirror at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, AICA Awards, Boston Chapter, Boston in 2003; the Bell Canada Award in Video Art in 2001 and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Toronto in 1993.
Exhibitions (selection):
Solo Exhibitions: 2004 The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; John Conelly Presents, New York / 2003 IKON Gallery Birmingham, Birmingham; Galerie Frédéric Giroux, Paris; The Power Plant, Toronto / 2002 MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge / 2001 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Balcony, Toronto; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Jewish Museum, New York / 2000 Secession, Vienna; Ecart, Basel / 1999 1301PE, Los Angeles.
Group Exhibitions: 2005 The Log Cabin, Artist Space, New York; Trade, White Colums, New York / 2004 Get Off!, Museum of Sex, New York; Freedom Salon, Deitch Project, New York / 2002 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York / 2001 Angst, Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal and Kunsthalle Graz, Graz / 2000 La Biennale de Montréal, CIAC, Montreal / 1999 Dream City, Villa Stuck, Munich / 1998 Brain Multiples, Art Metropole, Toronto.
Publications (selection):
AA Bronson, IKON Gallery, Birmingham 2003; AA Bronson: The Quick and the Dead, The Power Plant, Toronto 2003; Mirror Mirror, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge 2002; Negative Thoughts, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Chicago 2001; Angst, Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal and Grazer Kunstverein, Vienna 2001; AA Bronson 1969-2000, Secession, Vienna 2000; Dream City, Kunstraum München, Kunstverein München, Museum Villa Stuck, Siemens Kulturprogramm, Berlin 1999.
Illustrations:
Felix, June 5, 1994 (1995/1998), lacquer on vinyl, 2135 x 4270 mm;
Mirror Sequences (1969-70), black-and-white photography (unique series / 7 pictures);
Courtesy AA Bronson
1) Quotations are taken from AA Bronson, in: AA Bronson 1969-2000, Secession, Vienna 2000. |
