Shop > Catalogues
#04684
General Idea: Imagevirus
- Artist
- General Idea
- Date
- 2010
- Publisher
- Afterall Books
- Format
- Catalogues
- Details
- Softcover
- Size
- 15 × 21 cm
- Length
- 112
In the mid-1980s, the Canadian art group General Idea (AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal) created a symbol using the acronym AIDS, boldly arranging the letters in a manner that resembled Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE logo. This launched Imagevirus, a series of paintings, sculptures, videos, posters, exhibitions and ephemera that from 1987 to 1994 used the mechanism of viral transmission to investigate the term AIDS as both word and image.
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-84638-065-5
In this book, artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz analyses Imagevirus from the perspective of his own involvement with activist art initiatives in New York during the 1980s and 90s. Considering the battles fought over sexuality and representation in those years, and through the lens of modernist literature (Gertrude Stein and William S. Burroughs), the author approaches the virus as idea, as tactic and as identity. Bordowitz explores how Imagevirus infected urban spaces across the world, offering a new model for artistic production, one strongly suited to ideological struggle.
Related Items
- Art Metropole
- 896 College St
- Toronto, Ontario
- M6H 1A4 Canada
- +1 416 703 4400
- Hours:
- Wednesday to Sunday
- 11AM to 6PM
Art Metropole is a non-profit artist-run centre established 1974 as a division of Art-Official Inc. We are grateful for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, as well as our donors, members and volunteers.
Your donation assists in the development of contemporary art practices and programs for the general public. Art Metropole is certified by the Ontario Living Wage Network.
- Toronto Arts Council
- Ontario Trillium Foundation
- Canada Council
- Ontario Arts Council
