Programme Overview
Exhibition
General Idea
General Idea, P is for Poodle, 1983/89 © Royal Bank of Canada Art Collection
Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri 11:00–19:00
Sat, Sun 10:00–19:00
Tue closed
9 / reduced 6
Admission to all exhibitions
Challenging both the art world and society at large, General Idea remain a lastingly influential artist group whose groundbreaking practice spans 25 years. In the most comprehensive retrospective on the trio ever produced, the Gropius Bau presents more than 200 works from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.
Founded in 1969 in Toronto, the group – comprising Felix Partz (1945–1994), Jorge Zontal (1944–1994) and AA Bronson (b. 1946) – interrogated the production, circulation and consumption of images through a broad variety of media. Often through humour and satire, General Idea adressed various aspects of consumer culture, mass media, social inequalities, queer identity, the art economy and the AIDS crisis.
Developed in close collaboration with AA Bronson, the exhibition at the Gropius Bau brings together major installations as well as publications, videos, drawings, paintings, sculptures and archival material, providing an overview over the development of General Idea’s artistic practice.
VideoVirus by AA Bronson + General Idea
On the occasion of World AIDS day on 1 December 2023, the Gropius Bau and CIRCA present VideoVirus, a powerful video work by AA Bronson + General Idea on the 104 square-metre Limes LED screen on Berlin’s iconic Ku’damm. Drawing inspiration from General Idea’s historic Imagevirus, which in the mid-1980s raised awareness of the AIDS epidemic by reappropriating Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE logo, the artwork comes to life in a hypnotic video animation that spreads their acivist message.
Resources
To the overviewCurated by Adam Welch, National Gallery of Canada and Beatrix Ruf, with the collaboration of Zippora Elders, for the Gropius Bau
Organised by the National Gallery of Canada in collaboration with the Gropius Bau
Partners: Wall, Bouvet, Dussmann
Media partners: Tagesspiegel, Arte, rbbKultur, Monopol, Artsof the Working Class, BerlinArt Link, Rausgegangen
The exhibition is funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds
With the generous support of
