BCB ART is pleased to present a solo exhibit by Eric Rhein, 360 Moons.

Rhein has international recognition as an artist whose artwork embodies themes of love, sexuality, and identity, through his ever-evolving experience of HIV. Having tested positive in 1987 at age 27, 360 Moons honors his 3 decades of creating artwork through this profound experience. 

This intimate exhibition of selected works—photography, sculpture, and wire drawings—evoke the physical, ethereal, and mystic, and his personal connection to the natural world. Resilience and vulnerability, loss and survival co-exist in these light and shadowed works, reflecting Rhein’s spiritually driven understanding of being human.

360 Moons features photographic self–portraits, and images of loves. Mostly nudes, the series began in 1992 as moments of sensual self-reflection. Eric first sat for himself, naturally lit, with a tripod and timer—and the series spontaneously evolved, looking deeply at his own and his companion’s physicality, and their dialogue with mortality and sexual identity. Luminous images, with titles like Veil, Portal, and Kissing Ken, open and hold a space of possibility and transcendence. Begun at the height of the epidemic, the series bridges to the 1996 release of protease inhibitors (which transformed the treatment of HIV and AIDS), and which gave Eric a renewed vitality. 

This is artwork-as-memoir—a living testament, showing the quest to live as consciously and expansively as possible. It testifies that supposedly mythic spaces are truly accessible in very real, tactile ways, through a shift in consciousness or perspective.

Eric Rhein is included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art’s "Visual Arts & the AIDS Epidemic Oral History Project”, in which participants are interviewed in-depth, creating a comprehensive review of their life and work.

Rhein received his BFA and MFA degrees at New York’s School of Visual Arts. His art has been exhibited internationally at venues such as: London’s Victoria and Albert Museum; the New Art Gallery, Walsall, England; the Pera Museum, Istanbul; 21er Haus Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna; American Embassies in Austria, Cameroon, Greece, and Malta; the Addison Gallery of American Art; the Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ; the Islip Art Museum, NY; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art; Lincoln Center; Artists Space; Art in General; Sculpture Center; White Columns; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; the Museum of the City of New York; and the Smithsonian.      

Reviews of his work have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, ArtNews, and Art In America. Rhein has received multiple grants and fellowships, including: the Pollock/Krasner Foundation, Art Matters, Edward Albee’s “The Barn,” and the MacDowell Colony.