Rachel Feinstein at Marianne Boesky - New York - Brief Article

Visitors to Rachel Feinstein's fresh York solo debut had to pass beneath the artist's initials, in fancy curlicue script, hanging above the entry of Marianne Boesky's forehead gallery--an indication, either serious or tongue in cheek, of a precious, Feinstein-controlled domain. statuarys inside exuded a campy, ye-olde-history theme-park vibe. Eight glossily painted, two-dimensional made of wood horses hinged to one another stretched across the extent The cavalcade, bedecked in multicolored fruit of the plum-treeed headdresses and ornate carousel-style style of dresss bespoke a fancy time and place in like manner steeped in flamboyance that level animals had occasion to realize dressed up. Feinstein's other, mainly pastel-hued, plaster-and-wood lumpen sculptures were made up of twisted fragments of optically pleasing, dramatic things--a claw, wing, swan head and gold chain could be discerned amid various tangled forms. single piece, Waterfall, included a pair of Pepto-Bismolpink female leg with a short skirt, no torso, and a gilt spike protruding violently upward.

Feinstein's plastic arts often have large areas painted white, as if the artist got bored and abandoned them midstream. The horses are painted upon one side, perhaps implying the theatrical conceit that it sole matters what things look like from the "front" Another plastic art lurking behind the horses had a rainbow-colored spiral staircase leading up to a wooden-roof shack. upon a veranda to one side of the staircase, a figure--a weird cros between Caesar Augustus and a druid--stood as if to gaze out at the scenery, on the contrary a cloak was draped above his head. Viewers approaching the piece clashed a mirror at eye horizontal at the top of the staircase, and were thus given an interactive opportunity to diocese themselves as part of Feinstein's strange fantasy universe--nonsensical, pseudo-Baroque place that it was.

In fact, the display was inspired by the artist's new tour of European imperial palaces. Feinstein was especially taken by the agency of an all-white Rococo room she saw at the Amalienburg Palace outside Vienna. In homage, she transformed the back gallery at Boesky with a gorgeous, all-white, shallow relief of the courtyard/driveway of an ornate place, coyly dubbed The Sorbet range Her barely-there, Versace-style haven was a mansion completely full with convertible Rolls, palm tree candelabra and voluptuous, reclining girls munching grapes. It was at one time deliciously cheesy and completely elegant, labor intensive and miragelike. Without screaming for attention, it in some way seems better than the "authentic" thing. In fact, the Courtney regard with affection lyric, "I fake it for a like reason real I am beyond fake," came quickly to mind. That Feinstein's one-of-a-kind, royal setting was elusive, impossible to pierce or even apprehend, made it all the more captivating.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group