John Ahearn &Rigoberto Torres Inhotim

Alexander and Bonin, 132 Tenth Ave.
May 19–May 30, 2007

By John Ranard

The work of John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres recently at Alexander and Bonin—enamel-painted fiberglass sculptures created from plaster castings of real people—may seem tame by the standards of today’s postmodern artists. But there is more sophistication here than meets the eye. The subject matter is banal in the democratic sense of the word; these portraits are of common, ordinary people found on the street within the Afro-Catholic community of Inhotim, Brazil.

In fact, the work is intended to be seen in the real world: These portraits, on the sterile white gallery walls, is an edited yet detailed version of the lively tableau hung on city buildings above cobblestone Inhotim streets, commissioned by the Center of Contemporary Art in Brazil. The scene depicted in the original mural is a carnivalesque street party surrounding a bus stop, with people dancing, playing music and waiting; a life-size blue bus with passengers in the window is included, as is a non-menacing police officer with his German Shepard police dog. And while viewers at Alexander and Bonin may grasp that this gallery installation drives the commissions and sales needed to continue the real work back in Brazil, with a little imagination, they still share a common understanding of what it means to be human, a thing forgotten too quickly in our clogged, burdened, paved streets.

Ahearn and Torres don’t fit the mold of the market-driven, politically hip Chelsea artists creating fashionable art-mall merchandise. Their focus is a cathartic understanding of self through art, and they employ the same working process in Brazil as they did outside their Bronx studio in the 1980s: mass castings made during celebratory block parties in an atmosphere similar to the scene depicted, where extended conversations about life, art and politics take place among the long, arduous process of plaster mold-making—one after another. With the murals finished two years later, the lives of all those involved, the lives of those cast, the lives of those doing the casting, the lives of those standing around, talking, watching and taking it all in, become infinitely more enriched. The art is in the conversation.