AA BRONSON
b. 1946, CanadaAA Bronson is the surviving member of the legendary Canadian conceptual art collective General Idea, a 25-year collaboration in art and life with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal which ended when they both died of AIDS in 1994. 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.
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.
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