Welcome to HERO Young Art Week – our essential, multifaceted guide to the new wave of creatives working at the vanguard of contemporary art today. Across a dynamic week of digital content, we’re exploring what’s happening at the epicentre of this global community: from the ground up, the artists themselves and the key figures witnessing the evolution of the ideas, trends and movements defining this art generation.

Founding member of the legendary art collective General Idea and infamous for his early involvement in punk, AIDS activism and manifestations of ‘other’, AA Bronson is one of the most revered and radical artists living today. Bronson’s work in the art publishing field saw him found the Printed Matter NY and LA Art Book Fairs whilst director of Printed Matter between 2004 and 2010 playing an integral role in the rise of the print medium as an accessible and innovative communication channel for young artists today. AA Bronson currently lives and works in Berlin. 

While speaking to AA Bronson for our Young Art Week interview, we asked the prolific creative to select the artists he feels are making waves with their work in the world, and to ask them one question.

“My work as an artist is rather difficult to define,” reflects Bronson. “I love to collaborate with friends of various generations, and I love to include my friends in my ‘solo’ exhibitions. The artists listed below are all people that I included in my exhibition The Temptation of AA Bronson at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, and or AA Bronson’s HOUSE OF SHAME at the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Generally speaking, these projects combine sexuality, spirituality and community, both queer and not.”

AA Bronson selects Sholem Krishtalka

“I first met Sholem Krishtalka when he arrived in Berlin from Toronto,” says AA Bronson. “Mark and I invited him to our favourite nudist lake, the Teufelsee in the Grünewald, and we have been friends ever since. Sholem has been keeping a diary of his move to Berlin in drawing form and the results are remarkable. When will someone publish this as a really very special graphic novel? The results can be seen on his Tumblr, here. His own design for a tarot deck is included in my installation Tent of Healing. As my assistant, he helps me look in crystal balls.”

“When you look into a mirror, what do you see?” – AA Bronson

Sholem Krishtalka: I see my mirror image, which is to say, I see an image of myself as I am not; I see pores and hair and skin and tissue; I see mucosa and blackheads and whiteheads; I see surfaces and bumps and hollows; I see lines and contours and shapes and masses and colours; I see a document, a map of feelings and years and an unfolding life; I see someone staring back at me whom I continue to try very hard to understand.

Check out Sholem Krishtalka’s Berlin diary on Tumblr here. It’s also published the Penguin-Random House online magazine here. You can see more of his work at his website here. 

Stay tuned for more HERO Young Art Week content in the coming days and plug into our social media platforms for updates as they come.