Mario & Antonio (1991)

John Ahearn, Rigoberto Torres

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photo Pieter Vandermeer

photo Pieter Vandermeer

photo archive BKOR

photo archive BKOR

photo archive BKOR

photo archive BKOR

photo Toni Burgering

photo Toni Burgering

photo Bob Goedewagen

photo Bob Goedewagen

The artwork

In the Kromme Elleboog, a sidestreet of the Witte de Withstraat, the façade of a corner building is decorated with the portrait busts of two male figures. The sculptures were made by John Ahearn, with the assistance of Rigoberto Torres. The men depicted look at one another. One is rather young, white and dressed in a leather jacket while the other is dark-skinned, wearing work overalls and holding a willow street-sweeping broom. The sculptures are extremely detailed, and not only is attention placed on the subjects’ appearances, but also on the anatomical shape and colour of their faces. The artists approximate reality as closely as possible; this is demonstrated by the way the figures are posed, and in the use of props and clothing.

The people who posed for the sculptures are two local residents, Mario and Antonio. Their heads and part of their torsos were cast in plaster. After that, lifelike polyester sculptures were crafted using the moulds, and these were then painted by Ahearn. The underlying idea of the two façade sculptures is that Ahearn felt it was important this time not to portray public figures such as famous naval heroes, scholars, poets, philanthropists, heads of state, administrators or politicians. This time, he wanted to immortalise ‘unknown’ people, the average person on the street. It’s not about stereotypes here, but individuals, the type of person you might see on any city street.

With his replicas of real people, Ahearn took art outside of the walls of a museum. This reflects his interest in taking on a new type of engagement, centring on the public and zooming in on social themes. By using two unknown people as models and exhibiting them in a lifelike manner in a public space, he aimed to reinforce their identities, thereby increasing the social cohesion in the neighbourhood.

Year
1991
Location
in depot
Dimensions
100 x 180 x 50 cm
Material
polyester, paint and lacquer
Client
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (currently Kunstinstituut Melly)
Owner
Gemeente Rotterdam

The location

John Ahearn, in collaboration with Rigoberto Torres, had made many casts of local residents in the 1980s in New York’s Bronx neighborhood and exhibited them in the neighborhood. Thus was born the South Bronx Hall of Fame, a collection of casts of neighborhood residents. Selections were made from this collection and exhibited in various art centers around the world in 1991 and 1992. The artist traveled with his sculptures and in turn made new casts of people he met along the way. From December 7, 1991 to January 26, 1992, the exhibition was on display at the Rotterdam art center Witte de With (currently Kunstinstituut Melly).

During the exhibition, a working period of over a month was instituted, during which Ahearn also made Rotterdammers the subjects of his artworks. In collaboration with neighborhood organizations, which helped select residents of the neighborhood, a workshop was set up in community center Cool where residents could have their portrait cast in polyester. From this project result not only the façade sculptures of Mario and Antonio, but also the portraits hanging on a façade in Boomgaardstraat and the ensemble of three little children under an umbrella near a school in Kortenaerstraat were made at the time.

Ahearn found it necessary to cast Rotterdammers in addition to the portraits from the South Bronx Hall of Fame exhibited in Witte de With. Showing only the New York portraits, he felt, would create an exotic image by local standards. That work would have had a different impact here than in the Bronx. By choosing Rotterdammers, he involved them both in his project and in the exhibition.

John Ahearn, Rigoberto Torres

John Ahearn, Rigoberto Torres

John Ahearn (Binghamton, USA, 1951) studied art at Cornell University in upstate New York. After graduating, he went on to make films in Manhattan. He created masks and disguises for these films, and in the late 1970s, he started making plaster casts of artist friends of his. At the same time, Ahearn participated in the activities of CoLab (an abbreviation for Collaboration Projects, Incorporated). CoLab was an art collective that was founded in 1977 by young, New York artists who felt excluded from the system within the art world, or who consciously rejected this system. They wanted to allow art to speak a universally accessible language (once again), and to give it a place in everyday life.

In 1979, Ahearn met Rigoberto Torres (Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, 1960), the son of Puerto Rican immigrants. Torres had studied casting religious figures in his uncle’s sculpture factory in the South Bronx, New York. Starting in 1979, Ahearn and Torres created realistic sculptures together; the residents of the impoverished neighbourhood of the Bronx posed as the models for these works. For many years, they immortalised dozens of primarily African-American and Hispanic-American people from this neighbourhood. In the beginning, these were mostly individual portraits, and later they also made half-figures, typifying sculptures and ensembles.

First, they would make a plaster mould of a local resident. Using this, a polyester cast would then be created and painted in a true-to-life fashion. The casting process usually took place right on the street, arousing tremendous interest from bystanders. Those who posed for the works usually received a copy of their own portrait.

Ahearn and Torres made sculptures which left an open and cheerful impression. They formed a tribute to the people they depicted. Many of the scultpures earned a place in the neighbourhood’s public spaces, and emphasised the demographic changes which had taken place during the course of the 20th century in the United States.

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