Jack Pierson: The Miami Years
A landmark exhibition devoted to exploring Miami’s distinctive energy and spirit and the city’s transformative impact on the celebrated Jack Pierson’s rich and multifaceted practice.
Curated by James Voorhies
The Bass Museum of Art
Miami Beach, FL
September 24, 2025—August 16, 2026
Made possible with funding and staff from The Bass; realized within my responsibilities as Curator at Large
Jack Pierson—born and raised in New England in the 1960s—is a distinctly American artist whose work explores universal themes of desire, memory, loss, and the passage of time. His photography, sculpture, drawing, painting, films, books, and installations express emotional narratives and ways of being in the world. Often associated with a generation of photographers who challenged the boundaries of the medium—Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, and Mark Morrisroe, among others—Pierson likewise came to prominence in the early 1990s with his intimate portrayals of everyday queer life and bohemian culture in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Provincetown, and Miami Beach.
Imbued with the aesthetics of punk and advertising, while employing a dizzying array of visual references, his work has included weathered objects, found furniture, and repurposed commercial signage. Pierson’s commissioned projects for fashion and style magazines are often indistinguishable from his work made for galleries and exhibitions—in fact, they deeply inform each other. Common themes of isolation and waiting, wanderlust and escapism—longing for another place or time—run throughout his work and career. Pierson came of age during the AIDS crisis alongside such contemporaries as Félix González-Torres, Tabboo!, Robert Gober, and Kiki Smith, artists who tapped the era’s sense of impermanence, fragility, and loneliness—all recognizable themes in Pierson’s work.
Jack Pierson: The Miami Years is the first exhibition devoted to exploring the city’s transformative impact on Pierson’s life and work. The artist’s initial excursion from New York City to Miami Beach in the winter of 1984 instigated many return visits over the years. That first six-month chapter was an incubator of professional experimentation and personal growth. South Beach’s sun-soaked landscape and queer nightlife offered a spirited reprieve from the pressures of New York City, with the freedom of inexpensive apartments and thrift-store finds helping fuel the undercurrent of wanderlust and escapism brewing in Pierson’s art.
At that time, Miami itself was quickly transforming with art, fashion, and celebrity cultures colliding. Figures like Lauren Hutton, Rod Stewart, and Bruce Weber, gallerist Robert Miller, and artists Nam June Paik, and Julian Schnabel might be seen at places like News Café and The Strand. The city’s Art Deco renaissance and the inaugural edition of Art Basel Miami would soon elevate the scene to stratospheric heights. This alluring mix of glamor, art, and celebrity combined with Miami’s darker underbelly come together in Pierson’s complex expressions of self and psychological states of being, all fervent inspiration at the time and still detectable in his art today.
Jack Pierson: The Miami Years examines the impact of Miami’s distinctive energy and spirit on Pierson’s rich and multifaceted practice, underscoring the city’s enduring influence not only on Pierson’s aesthetics but more broadly on the rich intersections of contemporary art, fashion, and culture.
Brochure
...