Chrysanne Stathacos
AA Bronson’s Garden of Earthly Delights
September 19, 2015–November 22, 2015Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria
The Salzburger Kunstverein and Grazer Kunstverein were delighted to announce their collaboration with AA Bronson (1946, Vancouver, Canada) on two concurrent exhibitions. Bronson was artist and curator, subject and object, in this hybrid project. Both exhibitions featured his artwork, collaborations with younger artists, performances, and artworks by friends. A pioneer of collaborative and queer visual art practice, he is a founding (and the only surviving) member of General Idea (1969-94).
AA Bronson’s Garden of Earthly Delights
featuring AA Bronson with Adrian Hermanides, Matthias Herrmann, Mark Jan Krayenhoff van de Leur, Gareth Long, Ebe Oke, Chrysanne Stathacos, and JX Williams.
AA Bronson’s Garden of Earthly Delights transformed the Main Hall of the Salzburger Kunstverein into an activated, queer tableaux of moving and still parts, presenting an arena of engagement, transgression and reflection. The exhibition was, in one regard, a queer adaptation of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych of the same name (circa 1500), here aesthetically married with Japan’s famous Zen garden of Ryoan-ji (1499). Both the painted garden and the rock garden offer us a vision of the spiritual as a constructed universe. AA Bronson asked us to reconsider them in this exhibition, each alike a universe held within dramatized limits, like a gay bar or a drag club.
