AIDS Ring

1993 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

7 x 6 x 4.5 cm

General Idea


AIDS Ring by General Idea is a cast metal ring, which takes as its basis Robert Indiana’s iconic “LOVE” design, appropriating its pop aesthetic, and totalizing, simplistic universal messaging to instead emphasize the severity of the AIDS epidemic that occurred in the 1970s. This visual detournement of Indiana’s sculpture into the form of a ring is an indictment of pop art’s apolitical nature, as well as of its increasingly commodified status. General Idea instead proposes that art’s expansive platform for messaging be used to spread awareness and create accountability for political negligence of the AIDS epidemic. The work equates Indiana’s universal message of love, with the devastating affects of the AIDS epidemic; this is just one of the many iterations of the AIDS image that the collective mobilized across a wide array of objects to generate extensive exposure for their message.


The Canadian artist collective General Idea (Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson), active from 1967-1993, was an instrumental source of early conceptual art through their multidisciplinary practice. Their work often uses conceptual art to critically explore issues such as the myth of the artist, mass media, the body and identity, gender and sexual repression, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and in the process, advancing activism. Their AIDS body of work is what they are best known for ; a series of mass-market visualities and practices that drew widespread public attention to the epidemic. The trio often employed humorous approaches that still retained toothy critiques through the production of self-mythology, amongst other strategies. Patz and Zontal died of HIV related illnesses in 1994.


Colors:



Related works of genres: » les plasticiens, » performance art, » conceptual art, » vancouver school, » live art, » appropriation art, » process art

Sound of Ice Melting
© » KADIST

Paul Kos

1970

Sound of Ice Melting is based on the ancient Zen Buddhist koan about the sound of one hand clapping...

Lightning
© » KADIST

Paul Kos

1976

Parked on the shoulder of a single lane highway running through a desert landscape, Marlene looks over her shoulder from inside the car at a fierce storm looming over a distant horizon...

Martin Creed | The Dick Institute
© » TATE EXHIBITIONS

Martin Creed

Martin Creed | The Dick Institute Experience the work of one of this country’s most ingenious, audacious and surprising artists at the Dick Institute ARTIST ROOMS Martin Creed presents highlights from the British artist’s thirty-year career...

Sirens
© » KADIST

Paul Kos

1977

Taking its title from the eponymous mythological creature—famously featured as sea nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey...

Black Star Press
© » KADIST

Kelley Walker

2004

The triptych Black Star Press is part of the series ‘The Black Star Press project’ initiated in 2004 by the American artist Kelley Walker...

Pipe Opening
© » KADIST

Jeff Wall

2002

As suggested by its title, Pipe Opening (2002) depicts a hole in a wood wall exposed by the removal of a pipe...

Ponderosa Pine IV
© » KADIST

Rodney Graham

1991

Ponderosa Pine IV belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that live in Northern California...

No Title
© » KADIST

Félix González-Torres

1992

Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...

Sal Sem Carne
© » KADIST

Cildo Meireles

1975

Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...

This Exhibition
© » KADIST

Tino Sehgal

2004

Tino Sehgal’s This Exhibition requires an interpreter (in this particular piece, a gallery attendant) to faux faint each and every time a visitor enters into a given space...

The Nightwatch
© » KADIST

Francis Alÿs

2004

The Nightwatch , which is an ironic reference to the celebrated painting by Rembrandt, follows the course of a fox wandering among the celebrated collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London...

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura
© » KADIST

Rodney Graham

1996

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura (1996) belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that lives in Northern California...

20 Surrogates
© » KADIST

Allan McCollum

1982

In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...

Blind Spencer (Mirror)
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2002

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...

Person with Pillow: Desire, Lust, Fate
© » KADIST

John Baldessari

1991

The voids in Baldessari’s painted photographs are simultaneously positive and negative spaces, both additive and subtractive...