PHOTO:Eric Cahan

Eric Cahan, is Influenced by the Impressionists’ depiction of natural light and its ever-changing qualities, as well as Color Theory. For him, the color of light at sunrise and sunset is more than just science, more than nature, it’s a powerful particularity that stirs us. His mesmerizing color and light conjure the sensation of looking into the sky or the ocean, transporting viewers to feelings and memories rooted in the shifting hues themselves.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Eric Cahan Archive

For the works that are on presentation in “Rabbits, Rats and Cats” his solo exhibition at Benrubi Gallery in New York, Eric Cahan visited Havana and its nearby villages three times in 2016, spending significant time in El Barrio del Fanguito, where he was witness to Cuba’s social immobility and poverty, as well as to a lifestyle more in harmony with nature and the basic needs of its citizens than that of much of the West. In Cuba, Cahan took part in two Ayahuasca ceremonies*, which opened his heart and mind to new ways of seeing, and gave him a sense of connection to the people around him, and to their own connection to their land. The works of the exhibition were born out of these experiences. It integrates Cahan’s artistic practices, presenting photography, painting, and a film documenting his alternative vision of Cuban life, where inhabitants are portrayed as hybrid animal-human forms and anthropomorphic extensions of their surroundings. Using his photographs as a blueprint, Cahan enhanced each image through a treatment that tessellates the photographic surface, some of which is layered in oil paint, while other sections are reduced to phthalo shimmers, before the picture is finished with a crackle varnish. Cahan’s subjects retain their every-day identity and remain in their quotidian reality, but now possess an added or revealed aura of vivid psychological, cultural, and spiritual significance. Accompanying the paintings is a nonlinear film constructed from fragments of Cahan’s documentation and the resulting paintings, all of which give physical form to the artist’s psychedelic- evoked reality. Inspired by details in the paintings, a collection of generic suicide notes, as well as the psychological images they evoke, Cahan’s narrative voice-over acts as a guide to the film, which chronicles the death of the artist’s ego and his awakening into a new plane of coexistence.

*The Ayahuasca Ceremony is a shamanistic initiation in which you can experience altered states of consciousness.  The emphasis is on exploring your own potential as well as healing trauma and recovering your true essence. A brew made out of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the Psychotria viridis leaf, is used as a traditional spiritual medicine in these ceremonies

Info: Benrubi Gallery, 521 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, Duration: 2/3-15/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://benrubigallery.com