Eric Rhein: Visual Art

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Edelman Arts presents Abstraction: What is Real
On view March 1st through April 25th
Opening Reception: March 5th 6-8

The exhibition includes works by Mary Abbott, Fritz Bultman, Sir Anthony Caro, John Chamberlain, Xavier Corbero, Arshile Gorky, Chris Martin, Nabil Nahas, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, George Rickey, Doug Argue, Britt Boutros-Ghali, Jack Roth, Eric Rhein, and Frank Stella.

"Abstraction is transcendence. Realities are stripped of complication, allowing us to see with our minds what we are actually unable to see with our eyes. We enter a realm beyond the tangible, extracting the infinite from the finite. Abstraction is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into the unknown."
- Arshile Gorky

Since Pollock's calligraphic frenzies, Rothko's contemplative color fields, and de Kooning's feminine distortions, abstract art has become the standard bearer of contemporary art. But what is the current state of contemporary art and what constitutes true abstraction? We ask: What is real?

Gallery hours: Monday - Saturday 10am – 6pm
Edelman Arts
136 East 74th Street
New York NY, 10021
Phone: 212-472-7700
www.edelmanarts.com

THIS LAND

From March 3rd through April 8th 2012 BCB ART in Hudson New York will present a group show titled THIS LAND featuring work by Lynn Dreese Breslin, Frank Cressotti, John Foxx, Erik Hanson, Julian Opie, Eric Rhein, Ed Ruscha, Peter Seward, Patti Smith – and others.

The landscape show named for Woody Guthrie's traditional song features work that is anything but.

Lynn Breslin's paintings channel the little boxes and oddly manicured hedges of a "Levittown" like community, while Peter Seward's paintings point out our ridiculous attempts to hide technology doting the landscape.

Julian Opie taped his camera to the dashboard of his car, and took random snapshots while driving to Calais– putting them into small family-like photo albums, as a multiple. In 1966 Ed Ruscha documented "Every Building On The Sunset Strip" in panorama, which is considered an icon of artist's made books.

Eric Rhein's "Heathcliff" has the feel of an Arcadian environment akin to the paintings of Thomas Eakins.

John Foxx's photographs portray cities as a place to find anonymity, Patti Smith records fragments from homes of her poetic 'mentors' such as Arthur Rimbaud, while Erik Hanson and Frank Cressotti's paintings focus on landscape fragments depicted as a playful surreal archaeology.

Gallery hours: Friday - Sunday, and by appointment.

Gallery hours: Monday - Saturday 10am – 6pm
BCB ART
116 Warren Street
Hudson , New York. 12534
(518) 828-4539
www.bcbart.com

Leaves: An AIDS Memorial Artwork

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York City has devoted a room to an installation of a selection of work from Eric Rhein's AIDS memorial artwork Leaves, and its AIDS educational outreach companion The Leaf Project.

Leaves, which Rhein conceived in the fall of 1996 while an artist in residence at the McDowell Artist Colony, is a series of wire leaf "portraits" paying tribute to more then 180 people who he knew who died of complications from AIDS. The "portraits" along with their accompanying titles like Terry with the Hands, Blue Eyed Roland, Orsini the Sky Painter and Fair Pam, symbolically reflect the essence of each individual.

Since its conception Leaves has continued to evolve and be shown throughout the world. It is fitting that a selection of work from Leaves has been given a home in The LGBT Community Center in New York, were it can continue to be in the service of healing to the community largely impacted by the AIDS epidemic. Many people have reported a since of peaces while being in this environment.

Noted art historian & AIDS activist Robert Atkins wrote in his 1999 article, How to Make Art in an Epidemic, "Art has always played a role in coming to terms with collective tragedy, and the role of the artist has frequently been to bear witness. Surely an art of memory like Eric Rhein's can help harmonize our views by suggesting that honoring the past is one way to live more fully in the present."

Leaves is on continuous display at The Center.

Room 102 - First Floor.

Note: The room is used for meetings and receptions, and may be temporarily inaccessible when groups are in session.

The LGBT Community Center
208, West 13th Street
New York, NY 10011

212-620-7310

www.gaycenter.org

Leaves has an International Presence

The American Embassy in Malta recently acquired an installation of six leaf "portraits" for it's permanent collection.

Leaves has been shown internationally in both artistic and cultural institutions, such as: the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada; The Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY Purchase; the American Folk Art Museum in New York City; the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey; the Pera Museum in Istanbul, Turkey; The Memphis College of Art in Tennessee; the offices of The National AIDS Fund in Washington, DC; and the Ambassadorial Residence in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Rhein is currently working on a large-scale construction that may serve as the focal point of a future exhibition/installation. Under the working title Song of the Open Road, borrowed from Walt Whitman's poem from Leaves of Grass, this current project is a culmination of Rhein's expansive body of work. It's roots are in his exoskeletal figurative, and architectural sculptures of wire and found objects, as well as his constructions which meld together antiquarian book pages and covers, with found objects, and his own wire drawings. This piece brings together the many facets of Eric's personal mythology.