N.Y. Artists’ Collective Vents Its Rage in L.A. : Art: Gran Fury plasters bus shelters with AIDS posters. ‘It’s very public work and it’s all very controversial, so some people still try to stop us,’ said one member.

“W omen Don’t Get AIDS: They Just Die From It.”

That’s the slogan emblazoned across the first Los Angeles project by the controversial New York based artists’ collective and AIDS activist group Gran Fury.

While the group may be relatively unknown to some Californians, it has been gaining increasing attention in art circles--and especially in its native New York--since its beginnings in 1988. Formed out of the activist AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power after one of its members designed the internationally recognized “Silence = Death” slogan, Gran Fury presents its works--predominantly in the form of posters, billboards, T-shirts and buttons--exclusively in public arenas such as buses, subways and building fronts.

“They have gotten a good deal of attention in art magazines, and within the art world their work has been increasingly known,” said Ann Goldstein, associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is sponsoring the Los Angeles project. “We had been aware--and that was an awareness with great interest--of the work of Gran Fury, so this was a project that we responded to very quickly. We think that the activist work of artists’ collectives like Gran Fury that seeks to exploit public venues to get the word out is very important.”

The images produced by Gran Fury may spark recognition even from those outside of the art world. Their most notorious project--and one that received attention even in mainstream magazines--was a poster campaign featuring takeoffs on the familiar United Colors of Benetton ads. The posters, which hit New York subways in late 1989, featured three interracial couples, one straight, one lesbian and one composed of gay males, each locked in a kiss, with the bold words “Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do.”

Also receiving national coverage was an incident in November and December, 1989, when the group’s 8-by-12-foot banner “All People With AIDS Are Innocent” nearly closed down an entire exhibition of AIDS-related art works.

The banner was to have been hung on the outside wall of New York’s Henry Street Settlement during the “Images and Words: Artists Respond to AIDS” exhibition held at the center in conjunction with the first national “Day Without Art,” a now-annual event in which arts groups throughout the country hold special events in recognition of the toll AIDS has taken on the arts community.

After the art center’s administrators refused to allow the banner citing a policy against works hung on the building’s facade, the exhibition’s curator canceled the entire show, claiming that the banner was in fact censored because of its political content. The exhibition was reinstated only after the Borough of Manhattan granted its approval to hang the imposing banner across the street from the arts center.

Despite finally receiving critical acclaim in the art world and the inclusion of its past works in some major exhibitions, Gran Fury’s members say they still have difficulty finding venues and financial backing for the work, all of which deals with social and political aspects of AIDS.

“It’s very public work and it’s all very controversial, so some people still try to stop us,” said member Loring McAlpin, noting that the group even clashed briefly with the management of the 1990 Venice Biennale, when two of its images--criticizing the Pope’s stand on condom use and safe-sex education--were included in the exhibition’s prestigious Aperto section.

But Goldstein, who noted that MOCA’s board approved the current project unanimously, said the time had come for museums to get involved in such activist public work.

“We felt that it was very important, through the museum, to support this type of cultural activism,” she said. “For a museum to be involved outside of its walls (and) in activist issues is very important. It allows us to go beyond the usual audience that a museum would have.”

But even with the support of MOCA and New York’s Public Art Fund (an additional 100 posters are concurrently on view in that city), Gran Fury still had to raise more than $5,000--a third of the project’s total cost--to erect images.

“No one in Gran Fury ever gets any money for what we do. In fact, we’re always trying to scrape up funds for our next project,” said McAlpin, noting that the group relies on grants, prize money and private contributions.

McAlpin noted that all 10 men and women in Gran Fury--which prefers anonymity for its individuals and refuses to let its members be photographed--work on every project produced by the group, even though not all members are formal artists.

“We have visual artists, performance artists, a theater person, a video maker and graphic designers, so we’re mostly artists, but not all of us,” McAlpin said. “But we are all experts in advertising. We know how to create an image and get our point across.”

And with the “Women Don’t Get AIDS” image, McAlpin said, that “point” they were striving for was very clear: to bring about a change in AIDS research to include groups other than white gay males.

“AIDS research does not reflect the way women . . . are affected by HIV,” McAlpin said. “In many cases, women are not being diagnosed (as being HIV positive), and this under-reporting means that the statistics downplay the significance of the whole epidemic. This idea that anyone is safe is really misguided.

“The point of this project is to heighten public awareness of the facts because most people don’t know them. We do this type of work in the hopes that it will encourage people to in some way get involved.”