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INSTITUTE 193
Eric Rhein: Lifelines
Text by Paul Michael Brown, Mark Doty, Eric Rhein.
Commemorating a crisis: the first monograph on Eric Rhein, poetical chronicler of the AIDS epidemic in photos, drawings and assemblages
This is the first book on the work of American artist Eric Rhein (born 1961), whose career has spanned four decades. This unique monograph-memoir features intimate photographs, taken between 1989 and 2012. The self-portraits and images of friends and lovers correspond to the period spanning Rhein’s HIV diagnosis, his subsequent near death and his experience of a renewed sense of vitality. New York Times critic Holland Cotter wrote of 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.”
As a personal response to the AIDS crisis, Rhein’s compelling portraits highlight tenderness and care as life-saving instincts.
Included are related bodies of work: delicate assemblages and wire drawings, often serving as memorials for fallen friends. Rhein's photography, wire drawings, sculpture and watercolors honor love, touch, connection to nature, and familial history. Rhein mines collective and personal narratives, formulating pieces that are at once poetic and documentarian. Mark Doty and Paul Michael Brown contribute essays.
"River (self-portrait with Russell Sharon, Delaware Water Gap)," 1994, is reproduced from 'Eric Rhein: Lifelines.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The Body
Tim Murphy
Beautiful young men, sick but not visibly so, wrapped naked in each other’s arms. Fragile little sculptures composed of wire, buttons, jewels, and other found objects. And penises—lots and lots of penises, most in a state of peaceful repose. All of that is to be found in Lifelines, a new collection of about 30 years of work from Kentucky-bred, longtime New York City–based artist Eric Rhein, 59, who nearly died of AIDS in the mid-’90s before the protease treatment revolution brought him, along with so many others (if not all), back to life and health.
Easel Magazine
Alexandria Deters
[Rhein's] practice revolves around his understanding of the human experience, the relationships we make, the objects we hold and attach so much meaning to. He works in multiple mediums to convey this: delicately constructed assemblages, wire drawings of leaves serving as memorials, his personal photographs, and watercolors.
AnOther
Osman Can Yerebakan
Lifelines is both a catalogue and a visual memoir that chronicles the lives of friends, comrades, lovers, and peers... [the photographs are] crops of idyllic days spent between heartbreak and tenderness, as well as contemplation and bliss.
Elephant
Emily Gosling
The American artist’s images are as seductive as they are harrowing. His new monograph features self-portraits and images of friends and lovers, captured shortly after he was diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s.
PORT Magazine
Ayla Angelos
A compilation of tonal, monochromatic photography and mixed-media, Lifelines is a series of artworks taken and collected between 1989 and 2012... recording an important and personal period of history.
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Thursday, September 23 at 6:30 PM EST, artist Eric Rhein and curator and writer Paul Michael Brown will be guests of the Stonewall Museum & Archives for a Zoom conversation about Rhein's life, artwork and activism. SNMA Executive Director Hunter O'Hanian will join the discussion about the themes in Rhein's recent monograph-memoir, Lifelines, published by Institute 193. The event is free and open to the public. Please register here! A link and password will be emailed to you upon registration. continue to blog
Friday, June 18 from 6–7:30PM, Bureau of General Services—Queer Division presents Eric Rhein in conversation with Mark Doty and Paul Michael Brown, as they celebrate and reflect upon the themes that run through Rhein's first monograph-memoir, Lifelines—to which Doty and Brown contribute key essays. Register at Eventbrite in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event. continue to blog
"Internal Bloom" (2005) is reproduced from Eric Rhein: Lifelines, a new release this week. The first monograph on the artist, Lifelines collects evocative, sometimes erotic and othertimes bittersweet black-and-white self-portraits and portraits of friends and lovers alongside wire drawings, sculptural works, and delicate mixed media collages. "My art voices the course of AIDS—speaking names—telling our stories," Rhein writes. "Art-making opens channels to wisdom, communication and healing. The history of my survival and the stories of my friends who died are embodied in the objects I create. Shell-shocked as I am, I have a renewed sense of future." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 8.5 in. / 112 pgs / 84 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $40.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $56 GBP £35.00 ISBN: 9781732848238 PUBLISHER: Institute 193 AVAILABLE: 11/10/2020 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Institute 193. Text by Paul Michael Brown, Mark Doty, Eric Rhein.
Commemorating a crisis: the first monograph on Eric Rhein, poetical chronicler of the AIDS epidemic in photos, drawings and assemblages
This is the first book on the work of American artist Eric Rhein (born 1961), whose career has spanned four decades. This unique monograph-memoir features intimate photographs, taken between 1989 and 2012. The self-portraits and images of friends and lovers correspond to the period spanning Rhein’s HIV diagnosis, his subsequent near death and his experience of a renewed sense of vitality. New York Times critic Holland Cotter wrote of 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.”
As a personal response to the AIDS crisis, Rhein’s compelling portraits highlight tenderness and care as life-saving instincts.
Included are related bodies of work: delicate assemblages and wire drawings, often serving as memorials for fallen friends. Rhein's photography, wire drawings, sculpture and watercolors honor love, touch, connection to nature, and familial history. Rhein mines collective and personal narratives, formulating pieces that are at once poetic and documentarian. Mark Doty and Paul Michael Brown contribute essays.
