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.

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

Media partner: Hyperallergic