Jack Pierson Quietly Owned Miami Art Week 9 Photography Moments That Defined the Art World in 2025
By Alina Cohen
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Photography legend Jack Pierson has made his mark across America, shooting pictures of his queer community, collecting abandoned letters from storefront signs to make sculptures, and mounting a giant message in the Mojave Desert, at the edge of the country, that proclaims “THE END OF THE WORLD.” His star took a more mainstream turn this year when Obama announced that he’d be creating a found letter sculpture, reading “HOPE” for his forthcoming presidential library. Throughout his broad art practices, he’s maintained steady traction in the fashion world. This December, the artist quietly ruled Art Basel Miami Beach with an army of barely clad men.
The photographer mounted “Jack Pierson: The Miami Years,” a solo exhibition at the Bass Museum that documented his brief 1984 tenure in the city at the outset of his career. One new commission for the show, the monumental ARRAY (MIAMI) (2025), unites found images and ephemera with Pierson’s own photographs. Swimsuits, palm trees, half-dressed men, and a printed flyer for a wrestling competition at the Miami Beach Convention Center coalesce to create a diffuse portrait of the city. Pierson’s three galleries, Lisson, Regen Projects, and Thaddaeus Ropac, all presented his work in their fair booths.
Nearby, Pierson curated Tuxedo Park, a pop-up iteration of Elliott Templeton, the intimate Lower East Side gallery he co-runs with Evan Lincoln in a rundown apartment house, marked only by a doormat with their logo in art deco font. Among the outré treasures was a mini sculpture by Alma Allen, who will represent the U.S. at the upcoming Venice Biennale. Haunting photographs by Vienna Actionist Rudolf Schwarzkogler presented male subjects blindfolded or bound like mummies. A series of vintage “posture study photographs” from the 1950s accentuated the male nudes’ regal appearance in apparently research-oriented studies. A ca. 1928 pencil study of a nude, muscular gentleman by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita brought poetic charm to the eroticism. The show was a true standout amidst the big-budget fair goings-on and activations.
