NYAB Event - Eric Rhein “Ordained”

Eric Rhein “Ordained”

Pavel Zoubok Gallery

This event has ended.

Pavel Zoubok Gallery welcomes you to a new season with solo exhibitions by ERIC RHEIN and BARTON LIDICE BENES (1942-2012), whose practices reflect a lifetime of collecting and arranging objects in service of metaphor and memory. The two exhibitions will be complemented by an intimate presentation of works by these pioneering artists that explore survival and loss in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

ERIC RHEIN arrived in New York in 1980 and became a part of the rich fabric of the East Village scene, which included friends and colleagues such as Greer Lankton, Peter Hujar, Luis Frangella, Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz. The first works he made in New York, his butterfly puppets, constructed for George Balanchine, sparked an exploration of wearable sculptures, which were exhibited internationally and collected by the likes of Holly Solomon and Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman.

Featuring work created over the last three decades, Ordained emphasizes the tactility, mysticism and intransigent beauty of nature, a material lexicon nurtured during Rhein’s childhood summers in the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky. In The Order, 2006-2015, gold-filled, silver and copper wires form cellular structures where antiquarian book covers, crystal prisms, salvaged hardware and cast bronze leaves are harmoniously composed. Gathered from locations as varied as Japan, Thailand, France and the streets of New York City, the materials in The Order are a record of Rhein’s travels to physical and liminal spaces. The act of charging cast-off objects with a new vitality mirrors the artist’s own spiritual rebirth, experienced through his own evolving relationship with HIV.

After his diagnosis in 1987, Rhein became acutely aware of the possibility that the virus within him could coexist with a life of vibrant creativity. He made the decision to publicly exhibit as an HIV+ artist in 1992, exploring themes of vulnerability, resilience and transcendence. In 1996, the year protease inhibitors restored Rhein’s physical vitality and changed the landscape of HIV treatment, he began the ongoing series Leaves, honoring the lives of over 250 men and women he knew who died of complications from AIDS and whose lives still inform his practice.