AA Bronson was part of a threesome more legendary than Destiny’s Child, the Three Stooges and the Bee Gees combined.

It was called General Idea and it was made up of AA Bronson (born Michael Tims), Felix Partz (formerly Private Parts, born Ron Gabe) and Jorge Zontal (born Slobodan Saia-Levy). The group, whose mascot was the poodle, was famous for “their unrelenting production of low-cost multiples, and their early involvement in punk, queer theory, AIDS activism, and other manifestations of 'the other.'” They were ground-breakers in terms of medium, using beauty pageants and talk shows. They started a magazine and even opened a store. The group famously appropriated Robert Indiana’s LOVE using the same font and letter arrangement replacing the letters L-O-V-E with A-I-D-S. How’s that for a statement?

To backup a little bit to the group’s founding, it all started in Toronto, the scene of their meet-cute. Bronson had dropped out of school with the intention of starting a commune and free school. He then moved to Toronto in order to join the communal and student-run college, Rochdale College. (The experimental college eventually failed because of financial issues and probably because neighbors of the college didn’t want a hippie haven run amok with liberal BS next door.) But the trifecta had met and thus began a long and beautiful collaboration lasting from 1967 to 1994.

Through a cruel twist of fate, both Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal died of AIDS within four months of each other in 1994, leaving AA Bronson as the last surviving member of General Idea. He went on to do solo exhibitions and collaborate with younger artists, but his focuses shifted towards mysticism, shamanism and the spirits of the dead...obviously because most of his friends were dying/dead. His interest in the occult started when he was seven, but only began to dictate the direction of his work after the deaths of his close friends. He has since become sort of a bodhisattva of the art world… and also part of the Canadian National Order, which is chill.