Rochelle Feinstein “You Again”

Candice Madey

[Image: Rochelle Feinstein "Paintings Littlest Victims" (2003)]

This event has ended.

CANDICE MADEY is pleased to announce, You Again, a six-venue, international exhibition of new and historic work by Rochelle Feinstein, opening in January and February 2022 at Campoli Presti, Bridget Donahue, Hannah Hoffman, Nina Johnson, CANDICE MADEY, and Galerie Francesca Pia.

At CANDICE MADEY, the nexus of the exhibition is a seminal painting titled Paintings Littlest Victims (2003), in which a collaged print of two pansies is ensconced in color bands restating the shape of the painting frame. Feinstein often references tropes of painting (abstraction in particular), however, always vis-à-vis the artist’s heuristic queries of art and culture. The pansies central to Paintings Littlest Victims were photographed at Monet’s famed Giverny gardens when Feinstein was an artist-in-residence there. She was intrigued by idealized representations of nature in visual culture, and how such perspectives may do more to inhibit an understanding of our environment than to bring us closer to it.

New paintings in the exhibition continue Feinstein’s exploration of the floral form, deconstructing its pictorial associations with the feminine and the earthly. A range of bold, flat, and saturated colors appear several steps removed from anything recognizably organic. Feinstein’s flowers suggest an artifice that is emphasized by the frequent use of cardboard—a material that has recurred since 2016 in a series of work that obliquely references the language and architecture of Amazon’s supply chain. As the strain of the pandemic has further exposed the negative effects of just-in-time inventory systems and exploitative labor conditions, Feinstein continues to probe the parallels between corporate practices and our increasingly estranged relationship to the natural world—implicating the mythologizing impulse of art within these constructs.

This exhibition is part of a six-venue exhibition format that functions as a spatial representation of Rochelle’s many-faceted and decades-long practice. Bodies of work are arranged thematically by venue, which reflect upon this time of turmoil and anxiety with mordant wit. Each venue presents earlier work alongside newer work that responds to, teases, expands on, or complicates a series of continuous themes. You Again will be accompanied by a broadsheet publication that integrates text and images from all six exhibitions, available at each gallery.
Rochelle Feinstein: You Again

Bridget Donahue, New York: January 28 – March 12
CANDICE MADEY, New York: January 28 – March 12
Nina Johnson, Miami: February 3 – April 2
Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles: February 12 – March 26
Francesca Pia, Zurich: February 12 – March 26
Campoli Presti, Paris: February 12 – March 26

Born in 1947, Rochelle Feinstein is a longstanding and deeply respected member of the New York art community whose work and ideas about abstraction have influenced generations of artists. Over the past four decades, she has deflated the dogmas of modernism with humor and verve, liberally borrowing from different schools of painting, as well as other mediums, including drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video, and installation. Though it takes myriad forms, her singular project always centers painting within culture at large. She moves freely through the history of late 20th-century painting, rejoicing in materiality while poking holes in the notion of pure painting.
A major survey exhibition of Feinstein’s work originated at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2016), and subsequently traveled to Städtische Galerie in Lenbachhaus, Munich (2016), Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2017), and the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2018-2019). Other solo exhibitions have taken place at Kunsthaus Baselland (2018) and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (2012). Feinstein is Professor Emerita of Painting and Printmaking at Yale University (2017). Among her numerous accolades, she is a recent recipient of the prestigious Rome Prize Jules Guerin Fellowship in Visual Arts, American Academy in Rome (2017-2018). Her work is in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.