Raised in New York’s Hudson River Valley, and spending childhood summers in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, Eric Rhein formed a deep affinity with nature, which continues to inspire his multidisciplinary artwork. Influenced by the luminous landscapes that inspired the Hudson River School, Rhein’s art forges an intimate metaphysical and transcendental connection between man and nature. Exploring this complex relationship, Rhein’s work features a vast personal iconography-shaped by the natural environment such as hummingbirds, leaves, deer and other organic forms. Through his powerful metaphorical imagery, Rhein examines the liminal spaces between life and death, the tangible and the ephemeral, and the known and ethereal.
Working in a wide range of mediums, including wire drawings, sculpture, photography, and delicate mixed media collage, he handles often salvaged materials with empathetic reverence. Rhein’s considered and intuitive use of repurposed objects is a hallmark of his work, frequently employing materials as varied as wire, plates and pages from vintage scientific journals, hardware, jewelry, crystals and other found objects. For Rhein, the act of giving such cast-offs a new life mirrors the artist’s own spiritual path.
Rhein addresses the universal aspects of the human condition—particularly its vulnerability, resilience, and possibilities for transcendence—as experienced after his diagnosis with HIV in 1987. With its explorations of eroticism, beauty and mortality, New York Times critic Holland Cotter writes that in Rhein’s work, “the combination of art and craft, delicacy and resiliency, feminine and masculine, is exquisitely wrought and is, as it should be, seductive but disturbing.”
A presence in Manhattan’s East Village since 1980, Rhein became a part of the neighborhood’s arts community, with artists such as Greer Lankton, Luis Frangella, David Wojnarowicz, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, and Mark Morrisroe. As the community permanently altered the city’s cultural landscape, it was also profoundly devastated by HIV/AIDS. Through wire portraits, Rhein’s ongoing work Leaves honors individuals he knew who died of complications from AIDS. Initially 80 portraits at its conception in 1996, Leaves has now grown to over 250 portraits—an evolving, personal memorial to the overwhelming losses due to the pandemic.
