ABMB2024
John Ahearn & Rigoberto Torres
Art Basel Miami Beach 2024
booth s10 | Survey
december 4 - 8, 2024
Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present a compelling exhibition showcasing two decades of portraiture by New York artists John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres at Art Basel Miami Beach 2024. The gallery will be located in the Survey Section, Booth S10, dedicated to twentieth-century art.
Ahearn and Torres are currently enjoying a well-deserved wave of institutional recognition. In 2023, the Bronx Museum hosted a major survey exhibition, Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits, which garnered rave reviews from Hilton Als in The New Yorker and Travis Diehl in The New York Times. The duo’s ongoing prominence continues with their inclusion in Shifting Landscapes at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art Since 1968 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
While Ahearn and Torres are widely known for their collaborative work, they have each sustained distinct artistic practices throughout their careers. At Art Basel, our presentation will feature a dynamic selection of co-authored works alongside individual pieces by each artist. Central to the presentation is the co-authored masterpiece Samson (1990), a poignant portrait of Kenyatta Caldwell, a young Rastafarian who frequented Ahearn and Torres's Walton Avenue studio in the Bronx. Another significant co-authored work is the rare diptych The Graduates: Princess and Bashira (1989), which captures two children in yellow graduation attire. This diptych was first installed on the exterior walls of Ahearn and Torres’s apartment building on Walton Avenue in the Bronx in 1990, and its iconic imagery was photographed by Martha Cooper.
The exhibition will also present five works by John Ahearn from the 1980s and 1990s, including two pieces featured in the 2023 Bronx Museum survey. Additionally, five works by Rigoberto Torres from the same period will be shown, including two masterpieces from the early 1980s: Magic Kids and Uncle Tito at His Liquor Store.
This exhibition offers a unique opportunity to explore the rich, collaborative history of Ahearn and Torres while celebrating their individual contributions to contemporary portraiture. We look forward to welcoming visitors to Booth S10 at Art Basel Miami Beach 2024.
John Ahearn (b. 1951, Binghamton, NY; lives and works in Bronx, New York) and Rigoberto Torres (b. 1960, Aquadilla, Puerto Rico; lives and works in Orlando, Florida) have produced life-cast sculpted portraits and scenes of the South Bronx community for nearly four decades.
Ahearn and Torres’ collaborative work has been the subject of numerous two-person exhibitions, including Swagger & Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits of John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, in 2022; and Automatic for the People: John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, New Jersey, in 2010. Their South Bronx Hall of Fame works were the subject of a special presentation at Frieze Projects, New York, curated by Cecilia Alemani, in 2012. From 1991-1992, their work was the subject of a major traveling exhibition, The South Bronx Hall of Fame: Sculpture by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres, which travelled from the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas, to Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands, to the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii.
In 2024, the artists are included in several significant exhibitions, including Shifting Landscapes, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; American Vignettes: Symbols, Society, and Satire, The Rubell Museum, Washington D.C.; and Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968 at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (CA). Recent group exhibitions include City as Studio, K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong, in 2022; East Village, New York City, Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea, in 2018; Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2017; Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and The Body, The Met Breuer, New York, in 2018; and Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York, in 2016.
Their collaborative and individual work has been collected by numerous public museums, including The Art Institute of Chicago; The Broad, Los Angeles; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others.
ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH 2024
Venue
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139
Opening Hours
Private Days (by invitation only)
Wednesday, December 4, 2024, 11am to 7pm, First Choice VIP guests
Wednesday, December 4, 2024, 4pm to 7pm, Preview VIP guests
Thursday, December 5, 2024, 11am to 7pm, First Choice and Preview VIP guests
Thursday, December 5, 2024, 4pm to 7pm, Vernissage VIP guests
Public Days
Friday, December 6, 2024, 11am to 6pm
Saturday, December 7, 2024, 11am to 6pm
Sunday, December 8, 2024, 11am to 6pm
