Born Michael Wayne Tims in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada.
Lives and works in Berlin.
Awards |
|
| 2014 | AICA Award, Netherlands |
| 2011 | Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France |
| 2008 | Officer of the Order of Canada |
| 2002 | Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts, Canada |
Solo Exhibitions (selection) |
|
| 2018 | AA Bronson's Garten der Lüste, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin |
| 2016 | AA Bronson, Kunsthalle Wichita, Wichita, KS |
| 2015 | AA Bronson’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg |
| AA Bronson’s Sacre du Printemps, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz | |
| 2014 | AA Bronson: Life and Works, University of Toronto Art Centre, Toronto |
| 2013 | AA Bronson: Tent for Healing, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam |
| The Temptation of AA Bronson, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam | |
| 2008–09 | Invocation of the Queer Spirits (with Peter Hobbs), Creative Time, New York, NY; Fire Island Pines, New York, NY; Plug In ICA, Winnipeg; Creative Time, New Orleans, LA, and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff |
| 2004 | AA Bronson: The Quick and the Dead, The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver |
| 2003 | AA Bronson: The Quick and the Dead, The Power Plant, Toronto |
| 2002 | Mirror Mirror, MIT List Visual Arts Centre, Cambridge, MA |
| 2001 | Negative Thoughts, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL |
| 2000 | AA Bronson 1969–2001, Vienna Secession, Vienna |
Group Exhibitions (selection) |
|
| 2016 | Broken Flag, ICEBERG PROJECTS, Chicago, IL |
| 2015 | Self-Timer Stories, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg and MUSAC, León |
| 2014 | AA Bronson’s HOUSE OF SHAME, Burning Down the House, 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju |
| Love Aids Riot Sex 2: Art Aids Activism 1995 Until Today, NGbK, Berlin | |
| 2012 | Surplus Authors, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam |
| Composed: Identity, Politics, Sex, Jewish Museum, New York, NY | |
| 2010 | Singular Visions, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY |
| Love’s Body: art in the age of AIDS, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo | |
| 2006 | Six Feet Under, Kunstmuseum Bern |
AA Bronson co-founded the artists’ group General Idea with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal in 1969. The three artists worked and lived together until the deaths of Felix and Jorge in 1994.
Since then, Bronson has worked and exhibited as a solo artist, often collaborating with younger generations of artists. Since 1999, he has worked as a healer, an identity that he has also incorporated into his artwork. From 2004 to 2010, he was the Director of Printed Matter, Inc. in New York, founding the annual NY Art Book Fair in 2005. In 2009, he founded the Institute for Art, Religion, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York, which he now co-directs. In 2013, he was the founding Director of Printed Matter‘s LA Art Book Fair. He has taught at the University of California in Los Angeles, the University of Toronto, and the Yale School of Art.
AA Bronson’s artistic practice has long included elements of shamanism, although this tendency became more apparent only after the deaths from AIDS in 1994 of his collaborators Zontal and Partz. At the same time, as Bronson acknowledged: “The 60s obsession with Eastern religions, states of the ecstatic, and theories of radical living and working fit me perfectly. General Idea never presented itself as spiritual, but behind our corporate mask, we were the product of our generation.”
Bronson’s best-known project is perhaps his series of performative healing rituals and séances, Invocation of Queer Spirits (2008–09), for which he collaborated with Toronto artist Peter Hobbs to stage spiritual experiences in five locations across North America; in Banff, Alberta, New Orleans, Louisiana, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Governor’s Island, New York, and Fire Island Pines, New York. Bronson has characterized this series of performances as “a hybrid between group therapy, ceremonial magic, a séance, a circle jerk, and a quilting bee.”
