John Ahearn
dal 29/11/2001 al 12/1/2002
Segnalato da
29/11/2001
John Ahearn
Alexander and Bonin, New York
John Ahearn will exhibit new sculpture at Alexander and Bonin. This body of work was created in Pan Chiao, part of Greater Taipei, Taiwan, where Ahearn recently lived and worked for nearly a year. The sculptures are made of cast plaster or fiberglas and are fully painted or tinted with pigment. This exhibition will be the first in New York to show works made outside of the neighborhoods for which Ahearn is best known.
Pan Chiao
John Ahearn will exhibit new sculpture at Alexander and Bonin
beginning November 30th. This body of work was created in Pan
Chiao, part of Greater Taipei, Taiwan, where Ahearn recently lived
and worked for nearly a year. The sculptures are made of cast
plaster or fiberglas and are fully painted or tinted with pigment.
This exhibition will be the first in New York to show works made
outside of the neighborhoods for which Ahearn is best known.
For many years, Ahearn lived and worked in the South Bronx of New
York, where he created the majority of his castings in
collaboration with artist Rigoberto Torres. Between 1979 and 1995
they worked in several different studios in the South Bronx,
holding many outdoor casting sessions and completing four
large-scale murals, three of which remain on view today. Their
practice involved working with community groups whose access to
fine art and museum culture has often been limited. In 1995 Ahearn
moved to a storefront on East 100th Street and continued to work
with his neighbors.
There are four types of imagery in this exhibition. Busts of
twenty-one school children in a Taipei elementary school form one
large wall piece. Ahearn made a similar casting of a class of
school children in 1994 in Dublin, working in collaboration with a
boys’school and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. A second group of
wall works are three full-scale motor scooters - one holding a
family of four, another a couple and the third, a man with a crate
full of oranges. A three-dimensional wedding portrait will be
exhibited as will a free-standing sculpture - a ‘wooden’ bridge
with a full sized figure atop.
John Ahearn was born in Binghamton, NY in 1951 and attended Cornell
University. He was a founding member of Collaborative Projects,
Inc. and co-organizer of the Times Square Show, 1980. South Bronx
Hall of Fame, a survey of Ahearn and Torres’ work, was organized by
the Contemporary Arts Center, Houston in 1991 and traveled to
museums in Europe and U.S.A. Extensively exhibited and written
about internationally, Ahearn’s work is included in more than
twenty-five permanent museum collections in North America, Europe
and Australia.
Image: John Ahearn, Miguel 1999, acrylic on plaster, 34 x 22 x 12 1/2 inches, 86.5 x 56 x 32 cm
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 6pm
For further information or photographs please contact Claudine
Nuetzel or Laura Weinstein at 212/367-7474
Alexander and Bonin
132 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
telephone 212/367-7474
facsimile 212/367-7337