John Ahearn & Rigoberto Torres: JA–RT–LA–23
Charlie James Gallery is delighted to announce our second exhibition of legendary New York artists John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres. This exhibition is preceded by the artists working in residence for three weeks at the gallery’s CJG2 space located at 961 Chung King Rd. Ahearn and Torres will be casting people and completing the pieces within the gallery space. The residency will culminate with the public opening of an exhibition containing works from 1981 to the present, including the works made while Ahearn and Torres are in residence at the gallery.
The duo’s exhibition at CJG2, minimally titled JA – RT – LA – 23 will present an array of works by John Ahearn, Rigoberto Torres, and by Ahearn and Torres together, ranging from 1981 to 2022. The oldest piece in the show is titled Chico, and dates from Ahearn and Torres’s Dawson Street studio, from which most famously came the Banana Kelly Double Dutch mural on Kelly St. and Intervale Ave in the Bronx. The show will contain major works by both artists, including Torres’s Uncle Tito and Mango Man, and Ahearn and Torres’s joint masterpiece Samson from 1990. The show contains a very special pair of works, sculptures of the same person made 30+ years apart, Nikki (Ahearn, 1991) and Nico (Ahearn, 2022). Some of the strongest pieces in the show are among the most recent – Ahearn and Torres’s portrait of Bronx-based artist Shellyne Rodriguez, and Ahearn’s portrait of his friend and partner Rigoberto Torres, each completed last year, are both exceptional pieces. JA – RT – LA – 23 shows the duo working at the top of their form, and further heralds their fitting return to the art world conversation.
John Ahearn (b. 1951, Binghamton, NY) studied at Cornell University and was a founding member of Collaborative Projects, Inc. and co-organizer of the Times Square Show (1980). Ahearn’s work alongside that of his long-time collaborator, Rigoberto Torres was the subject of a survey exhibition, South Bronx Hall of Fame, organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, Houston in 1991, which traveled to museums in Europe and North America. In the 1980s and 1990s the artists executed several outdoor murals in the Bronx, New York and collaborated on public projects and exhibitions in Europe and North America. Between 2000 and 2002 Ahearn completed a public project in Pan Chiao, Taiwan and between 2005 and 2006, Ahearn and Torres collaborated on two large scale wall murals at the Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporânea in Brazil. In the fall of 2010, their work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ. In May 2012, John Ahearn alongside Rigoberto Torres participated in the special projects section of the Frieze Art Fair on Randall’s Island, where they presented a reconstruction of their legendary 1979 exhibition at Fashion Moda, South Bronx Hall of Fame. Ahearn’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (1980); the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1982); the Whitney Museum of American Art (1985); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1993); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1996); the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2008-2009); the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2009-2010); and “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1, New York (2015). Ahearn lives and works in NY and is represented by Alexander and Bonin, New York and Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles.
Rigoberto Torres (b. 1960, Aguadilla, Puerto Rico) moved to New York when he was four years old—first to upper Manhattan and then to the Bronx. Torres grew up working in his uncle Raul’s shop, Paul’s Statuary, Co. which would invest him with a knowledge of molding and casting that would facilitate the connection to and partnership with Ahearn. Torres creates plaster and fiberglass life-casts that are empathetic studies of real people – family, friends and strangers. The focus of Torres’s career has been the use of art to define and bring together communities by celebrating the people who live there. Torres has been selected for the Whitney Biennial Exhibition and the Venice Biennale. His work is in the collections of numerous major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Dallas Museum of Art. Torres lives and works in Orlando, FL and is represented by Alexander and Bonin, New York and Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles.