AA Bronson

Dialogues Between Artist and Curators:
AA Bronson and Linda J. Park

Wednesday 13 December, 6:30 pm

Americas Society
680 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
T: (212) 249 8950
F: (212) 249 5868
culture@americas-society.org
http://www.americas-society.org

Over a decade after the death of his two artistic partners, AA Bronson has focused on creating work that confronts the experience of personal loss, trauma, and individual identity. Outside of the collaborative group General Idea, which defined his life and work for twenty-five years, AA Bronson continues to traverse the borderline between the private and public domain, to merge life with art, and the social and political with the making of art.

AA Bronson’s work focuses on death and disease, and individual and collective trauma, as well as illusion and identity. His well-known billboard-sized portrait of Felix Partz on his deathbed, exhibited at the 2002 Whitney Biennial, is a poignant example. This image is at once a memorial to his partner, a stark portrayal of the ravages of AIDS, and an art-historical reference to Gustav Klimt and the “fin de siecle”. Combining text and images, the artist’s ongoing series of self-portraits—including “The Hanged Man”, and the diaristic writings of “Negative Thoughts” and “Mirror Mirror”—are intimate inquiries into the connection between body, mind, history and memory. Most recently, AA Bronson’s has increasingly tied aesthetic experience to alternative healing practices as a means of investigating who we are and how we bear witness to the transitory nature of life.

Linda J. Park is a Program Officer at the New York Foundation for the Arts. Prior to joining NYFA, Ms. Park was a curatorial and arts management consultant at Howell Art & Design, NYC. From 2001 to 2004, Ms. Park was the Curatorial and Development Associate at Downtown Arts Projects and worked extensively with US and Canadian artists. She has curated and organized individual artist projects, group exhibitions, as well as been involved in developing career resource programs. Ms. Park was the Principal Organizer of Brewster 2003 Collaborations, a public art project in upstate New York, and her writing has been in published in periodicals such as Read Baby (Art & Culture), Latitute 53, and See Magazine.

This public dialogue with AA Bronson will explore the range of the artist’s life and work.

The event will take place at Americas Society. It is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible.

Please RSVP by calling 212.277.8359 or emailing culture@americas-society.org.

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A Principality of its Own
40 Years of Visual Arts at the Americas Society

The publication presents fifteen scholarly and critical essays by a diversity of art historians and curators who examine various aspects of the history of Latin American art in the United States. They discuss the relevance of the Americas Society’s trajectory vis-à-vis the intricate relationships between art, economics, and politics since the institution’s 1965 founding in New York City by David Rockefeller.

Beverly Adams - Alexander Alberro - Alexander Apóstol - Cecilia Brunson
Luis Camnitzer - Thomas B.F. Cummins - José Luis Falconi - Andrea Giunta
Nicolás Guagnini - Paulo Herkenhoff - Anna Indych-López - Luis Pérez Oramas
John Pruitt - Gabriela Rangel - Sofía Sanabrais - Mary Schneider Enriquez

Published in 2006 by the Americas Society in conjunction with the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Distributed by Harvard University Press.

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ABOUT US

The Americas Society is the premier national not-for-profit institution dedicated exclusively to educating U.S. public about all facets of their Western Hemisphere neighbors. Its purposes are to foster an understanding of the contemporary political, social and economic issues confronting Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada, and to increase public awareness and appreciation of the rich cultural heritage of our neighbors and the importance of the inter-American relationship.