BRUCE CAHN
BRUCE CAHN
BRUCE CAHN
Born in the Bronx, Bruce Cahn led an eccentric, solitary life driven by an all-consuming desire to live life as an ongoing creative process.The son of a prominent NewYork City caterer, he spent his childhood comfortable but socially disinterested, preferring to spend time in his parent’s basement sculpting anatomical studies of the human form or mounting shows upstairs of his drawings and prints. After attending the Horace Mann School where he studied sculpture under the esteemed arts instructor IonTheodore, he worked briefly for his father’s Kosher catering company at the Grand Concourse employing his skillset and love of form to create custom ice sculptures for events.
He continued his education at Bard College, where he studied with Harvey Fite, whom he visited at his quarry, Opus 40, in Saugerties, NY; Rhode Island School of Design; and with sculptor José Mariano de Creeft. He also became a lifetime member ofThe Art Students League, a refuge he routinely frequented to draw, paint, and make sculptures.
An outsider in many senses of the word, Bruce Cahn was a prolific and reclusive creator of a diverse range of distinctive images and sculptural objects. His practice was both obsessive and spiritual, working tirelessly, day-after-day, in private to perfect each hand made visual art discipline—a goal he believed that would prepare him for his next life. Once he’d become an expert in one medium, he would turn to another –always learning, always growing.
In his isolation he amassed a lifetime of highly unique pieces, produced over a 25-year period inside of his modest Chelsea studio or cottage in Woodstock, and included street photography, analog photographs, nude watercolor studies, geometric oil paintings, and eccentric self-portraits. In this large and unusual collection, Bruce Cahn’s extraordinary talent as a colorist, his sensitivity to line, and rhythmic compositions combine to create a formal beauty that finds a place in any defined art category.
Bruce Cahn’s devotion to creativity was broad and continuous, an internal contest of mastery. Now, the public has the opportunity to view his prodigious body of work from a singular vantage.
- Chadd Scott
Bruce Cahn
Flower Mandela, 2016
Gouache on paper
49" x 44.5" | 124.5 x 113 cm
Bruce Cahn
Four Axe Mandala, 2016
Gouache on paper
49" x 44.5" | 124.5 x 113 cm
Triangle Mandala, 2016
49" x 44.5" | 124.5 x 113 cm
Bruce Cahn
Gouache on paper
Eye Mandala, 2016
49" x 44.5" | 124.5 x 113 cm
Bruce Cahn
Blue
Gouache on paper
Bruce Cahn
Lips Mandala, 2017
Gouache, pencil on paper
8” x 8” | 20 x 20 cm
Bruce Cahn
Eye Mandala, 2017
Gouache on paper
8” x 8” | 20 x 20 cm
Joan Bankemper
Bruce Cahn
Mandala 1, 2017
gouache on paper
Connections #6 2023
Gouache on paper
8” x 8” | 20 x 20 cm
17” x 14” inches
Bruce Cahn
Small Mandala II, 2017
Gouache on paper
8” x 8” | 20 x 20 cm
Bruce Cahn
Masked Caucasian Woman Standing in Chelsea, NYC, 1998
gouache on handmade paper
30” x 22.5” | 76 x 57 cm
Gratitude for this exhibition goes to Opus 40 and Mavie Cahn.
Catalogue Design: Jen Dragon, Cross Contemporary Art Projects