General Idea Playing Doctor, 1992

In this heavily retouched self-portrait, the three artists embody a team of doctors. Begun in the mid-1980s, General Idea’s group self-portraits entitled Three Men Series present the artists as a shared identity and play a central role in their artistic practice. The 1992 Playing Doctor arranges the artists in a triangular composition: Jorge Zontal is placed in the center of the image slightly elevated above Felix Partz and AA Bronson. Wearing doctor’s lab coats, they use their colored stethoscopes on one another as they fade into a background of floating pills.

The colored capsules refer to General Idea’s series "PLA©EBO", created in the early 1990s when the group focused on projects dealing with AIDS, its social and political implications, and the lack of both media coverage and government action. Formally recalling both minimalist sculpture and late 1980s aesthetics, the pills were a direct reference to the spread of the AIDS epidemic and new medications used to treat HIV infections.

The appearance of the picture is somewhere between a painting and a photograph. At the same time, the heavy retouching of the photo draws attention to the artificiality of the artists' self-portrait.