Pause: AA Bronson’s Garten der Lüste

Opening: 25 April 18, 7 pm

Featuring AA Bronson / Collaborations with Adrian Hermanides, Mark Jan Krayenhoff van de Leur, Travis Meinolf, James Richards, and Scott Treleave / Performances with Spencer Carter, Michael Dudeck, Richard John Jones, Ebe Oke, and Chrysanne Stathacos / Additional works by Elijah Burgher, TM Davy, Sholem Krishtalka, Chrysanne Stathacos and introducing: JX Williams

AA Bronson’s Garten der Lüste—a 5-day hybrid installation featuring performances and artworks—will inaugurate KW’s second exhibition season of 2018 as part of its Pause series. Pause is envisioned as a platform to punctuate the program by presenting a singular installation for a short period of time in order to bridge relationships between the past, present and future.

AA Bronson (born 1946, Vancouver) is both artist and curator, subject and object. In this project, Bronson continues his practice of enfolding his community of artists within his own performances and artworks. The project takes Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (circa 1500) as its starting point. To analyze Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych is an attempt to describe the indescribable and to decipher the indecipherable—an exercise in madness. The project could be seen as a queer adaptation that executes this madness through various spirits and universes.

A pioneer of collaborative and queer visual art practice, AA Bronson is the sole surviving member of the art collective General Idea (1969–94). He has had a long history with political and social issues in art and publishing, and has collaborated with many generations of artists across many disciplines. He is a founder of FILE Magazine, Toronto; Art Metropole, Toronto; The NY Art Book Fair, New York; The Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice, New York; and AA Bronson’s School for Young Shamans, which is nomadic. In the last decades he has knitted elements from various religions into his work, from Tibetan Buddhism and Shamanism to Ceremonial Magic, and Santería.

Tent for Healing

The Tent for Healing invites visitors to one-on-one sessions on the subject of healing. On Thursday, April 26 and Friday, April 27 from 11 am to 2 pm, the sessions will be held with artist AA Bronson, with Richard John Jones assisting. On Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29 from noon to 3 pm, sessions will be held with artist Richard John Jones with Spencer Carter assisting. If you would like to join a session, please send an email to reservation@kw-berlin.de, and write a few sentences (in English) why you would like to join the session. If you are chosen for one of the sessions, you will be asked to bring a gift for the artist, something that is difficult for you to give away.

Director and curator: Krist Gruijthuijsenv
Assistant curator: Maurin Dietrich

AA Bronson’s Garten der Lüste will be on view only throughout Gallery Weekend Berlin (April 26–29, 2018). Simultaneously, Esther Schipper, Berlin presents Catch me if you can! AA Bronson + General Idea, 1968–2018 from April 26 through May 26, 2018.

Exhibition booklet (PDF)

Part of project: Pause series

The Pause series of KW Institute for Contemporary Art allowed for an ephemeral yet deep engagement with a single artwork in order to draw and question relationships between the past, present, and future. A Pause acted as a punctuation of KW’s regular program by presenting an artwork for a short period of time in between exhibition cycles, working with this state of in-between. Pause projects were predominantly commissioned or reworked pieces that shifted between or even merged the disciplines of performance, installation, video, and sonic work.

Overview
2017–2024

Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards
Workers in Song
7–9 June 24

Pause: The Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group
25/27 August 23

Pause: Alexis Blake
Crack Nerve Boogie Swerve
27–29 January 23

Pause: Lydia Ourahmane
sync
1–2 October 22

Pause: Tobias Spichtig
Die Matratzen
19–23 January 22

Pause: Michele Rizzo
REACHING
1–3 October 21

Pause: Archivio Conz Collection
Broken Sounds / Remote Music—Prepared Pianos
16–19 January 20

Pause: Every Ocean Hughes
Help the Dead
24–25 August 19

Pause: Emma Hedditch
+49 30 243459-53
18–19 May 19

Pause: Jimmy Robert (After Ian White)
Joie noire
19–20 January 19

Pause: Evelyn Taocheng Wang
What is he afraid of?
27–30 September 18

Pause: Ericka Beckman
Super-8 Trilogy
18–21 January 18

Pause: Margaret Honda
Spectrum Reverse Spectrum
18–20 August 17

Pause: Anthony McCall
Line Describing a Cone
27–30 April 17

Part of project: The Berlin Sessions

Since February 2017, KW Institute for Contemporary Art organized a series of monthly public talks in collaboration with various institutions and organizations located in Berlin. The series entitled The Berlin Sessions explored the fabric of cultural producers in the city by inviting one Berlin-based speaker to give a presentation on another cultural producer that he/she/they find inspiring. The goal of the lecture series was to highlight the work of Berlin-based creatives from the perspective of their peers; to map connections between the various producers and fields and to strengthen the existing networks between locally based artists, authors, musicians, performers, researchers and other creative producers. 

Overview 
2017–2021

Talk between Renée Green and Iman Issa
28 October 21

CANCELED: Laura Horelli & Naomi Beukes-Meyer
25 March 20

Elvia Wilk
17 September 19

Reza Abdoh, Here and Now
10 April 19

Reading David Wojnarowicz
15 March 19

Kasper König, Kawara + Kritik = Koda 
18 January 19

Jeff Weber in conversation with Robert Beavers
Book launch and film screening
5 December 18

Escales: atelier le balto
Book Launch
21 November 18

Claudia Skoda on art and fashion in West Berlin
Lecture, in German
28 February 18

Philipp Ekardt on Heike-Karin Föll
24 January 18

Gregor Hildebrandt on Pola Sieverding
15 December 17

Dellbrügge & de Moll on below papers
4 October 17

Julieta Aranda on Anri Sala
Lecture, in English
21 June 17

Käthe Kruse on Geniale Dilletanten
Lecture, in German
31 May 17

Annika Eriksson on Charlotte von Mahlsdorf 
Lecture, in English
22 March 17

Michel Auder on Daniel Knorr
Lecture, in English
8 March 17

Peter Wächtler on Hans- Christian Lotz
Lecture, in English
21 February 17

The project at KW is generously supported by Esther Schipper, Berlin, the Embassy of Canada, Berlin, and the Canada Council for the Arts, Galerie Thomas Fuchs, and Maureen Paley, London.