Charlie James Gallery presents “The Bronx Comes to LA,” a two-person show celebrating the artistic partnership (spanning over 40 years) of seminal New York artists John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres. Viewing is by appointment only – see below.
The artists first met at the Fashion Moda alternative space in the Bronx in 1979, where Ahearn was doing live castings of people in front of the storefront window, and hanging the painted portraits as an exhibit. Torres, then 18, had a keen understanding of what Ahearn was doing, having grown up working in his uncle’s religious statuary factory. The two artists worked together, visiting the statuary factory and installing the group of casts as The South Bronx Hall of Fame at the neighborhood Con Edison Building. After the Times Square Show in the summer of 1980 they opened a casting workshop together in Torres’s neighborhood on Walton Avenue. In the early Eighties they installed several permanent fiberglass relief murals in the Bronx. Ahearn and Torres have completed numerous sculpture projects together, in Baltimore, Rotterdam, Taiwan, Brazil, and Puerto Rico.
“The Bronx Comes to LA” features sixteen pieces in total dating from Bronx-era work as early as 1990 to new works completed in 2020. The gallery worked with Ahearn and Torres to select a body of work representative of the artists’ distinct practices, while also exhibiting pieces co-authored by the artists, as well as a series of self-portraits and other pieces reflective of the artists’ own lives.
On view: January 16 – March 27, 2021 – By appointment only; CLICK HERE to reserve your spot.
What: “The Bronx Comes to LA”
Where: Charlie James Gallery, 969 Chung King Road LA, 90012
When: By appointment
Website: https://www.cjamesgallery.com/