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24 Facts About AA Bronson

1.

AA Bronson was a founding member of the artists' group General Idea, was president and director of Printed Matter, Inc.

2.

AA Bronson was an avid reader as a child, and it was through his reading habits that he explored his interest in art, architecture, spirituality and the occult, which would remain significant touchstones throughout his life and career, especially in his post-General Idea solo career.

3.

AA Bronson attended the University of Manitoba as an architecture student in the mid-1960s.

4.

AA Bronson met Ron Gabe at the University of Manitoba.

5.

AA Bronson encountered the InterMedia artist collective, and Slobodan Saia-Levy.

6.

AA Bronson was the director of Art Metropole from 1974 through 1984, and again from 1996 through 1998.

7.

AA Bronson is currently represented by Esther Schipper, Berlin and Maureen Paley, London.

8.

AA Bronson began working professionally as a healer initially out of personal calling, and this professional identity as a healer was integrated into his artistic identity.

9.

AA Bronson has said that he approached his identity as a healer in the same way that General Idea approached their identities as artists: the word was so overused, it had lost any particular meaning and significance, and so he was free both to assume the 'drag' of a healer, and consequently, to invest the word with his own meaning.

10.

In 2004, AA Bronson began working at Printed Matter as its director.

11.

Via his work at Printed Matter and at the Book Fairs, AA Bronson began to be introduced to a network of a younger generation of artists, with whom he began and continues to collaborate regularly.

12.

In 2009, AA Bronson enrolled as a Masters of Divinity candidate at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.

13.

In 2013, AA Bronson was invited to Berlin to be a resident as part of the DAAD Berliner Kunstler program.

14.

AA Bronson had his first solo institutional exhibition outside of General Idea in 2000 at the Vienna Secession in Austria, followed closely by a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, a solo exhibition at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, and another at The Power Plant in Toronto and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver.

15.

AA Bronson was featured in the Montreal and Whitney Biennials.

16.

AA Bronson had a major solo exhibitions at Esther Schipper Berlin, Maureen Paley and at Kunstwerke Institute for Contemporary Art in 2018.

17.

AA Bronson has been deeply involved with publishing, promoting publishing activity as a primary artistic form.

18.

AA Bronson published artists' books for Art Metropole by Jeff Wall, Colin Campbell, Lisa Steele, Hamish Fulton, Hans Haacke, and others, as well as conceiving the series Little Cockroach Press, of which he edited the first few issues.

19.

AA Bronson has written widely, including texts for FILE Megazine, and General Idea publications, as well as essays for art magazines and catalogues.

20.

AA Bronson has published numerous artist books and projects under his own imprint, Media Guru.

21.

AA Bronson has been awarded the Skowhegan Award, the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Bell Award in Video Art, and a Chalmers Fellowship.

22.

AA Bronson is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

23.

AA Bronson has received honorary doctorates from NSCAD University, Halifax, Canada; Concordia University, Montreal, Canada; and McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.

24.

In 2014, The Temptation of AA Bronson won the AICA Netherlands award for best exhibition.