AA Bronson

AA Bronson's 2003 exhibition at Ikon consisted of one work, his portrait Felix, June 5th, 1994 – a vast photograph, taken of his deceased friend Felix a few hours after he died. Together with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, Bronson founded the acclaimed group General Idea, with whom he exhibited throughout the world for over thirty years.

This exhibition marked his first UK show as a solo artist after Felix and Jorge died of AIDS related illnesses and as such, functioned as part of a healing process. The work itself was displayed alone in Ikon’s first floor galleries and as a consequence appeared as an iconic human gesture in an architectural void of blank white walls, having no juxtaposition or ‘competition’ with other work in the space.

In echo of this, the catalogue contains only the single image, Felix, and also includes an in-depth interview between Bronson and German artist Matthias Herrmann. This candid exchange explores issues such as the boundaries between the public and the private, victimization, the literary/artistic depiction of AIDS sufferers and the relationship between death, art and audiences.

Bronson’s gesture of photographing his close friend in death is at once tough in its record of the facts and beautifully tender, embodying an extraordinary tension between an assertive decorative quality – a Klimt-like collision of patterns and bright colours – and profound subject matter. In accompaniment to this, the interview recorded in this catalogue functions as a powerful and moving defense of Bronson’s efforts to face grief through creativity.