Sculpture (Sculpture)

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.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other. Gonzales-Torres’ original work was a personal allusion to his own partner’s increasingly debilitating HIV-related illness, which grapples with the existential tension of coexistence in the face of death. Cerith Wyn Evans’s piece takes the same concept, and adds a third clock, moving from the intimacy of a monogamous relationship to suggest a more expansive, or possibly polyamorous alternative.