KATHERINE MCMAHON
Habitat is a weekly series that visits with artists in their workspaces.
This week’s studio: Rachel Feinstein; Tribeca, New York. “What’s interesting about life is you finally reach a point where you just figure it out,” Rachel Feinstein said recently in her SoHo studio, where she’s worked for almost seven years. “But then of course there’s a new problem that arises and you deal with that for the next five years.” Feinstein works with a variety of materials, but is perhaps best known as a sculptor. “I always have two different styles of making sculpture. One is like the classic Bernini kind of madness of forms all swirling together that are made with resin. And then there are these other paper ones that are mimicking a drawing vs sculpture.” She prefers working with wood and resin, but currently, she’s in the developmental stages of creating large-scale pedestals. These garden sculptures are based on porcelain wares which will likely be bronze and patina white, a departure from the malleability of wood and resin. “What fascinates me is using a flat image and trying to make it three dimensional,” Feinstein said, referring to source imagery. “You have to make things up all the time”
In addition to sculpture Feinstein has recently contributed art direction to a number of publications including Garage, Numero, and New York magazine, recruiting friends and colleagues such as Grace Coddington, Helen Marden and Karen Elson to collaborate. “All of these projects kind of lend themselves to each other,” Feinstein said, motioning toward an image of The Seven Ages of Woman by Hans Baldung, who was was an assistant to Albrecht Dürer. His work commonly dealt with time, death, and decay, which Feinstein counts as a theme in her own work. “Even when I was 18 years old, I would make movies of myself as an old woman. You have a fantasy of that when you’re young, but when you’re older it’s not as romantic as you think.” Earlier this year, Feinstein created a portfolio in New York inspired by the painting, and continues to explore this theme in an ongoing project for next year.
Feinstein is currently in a group show titled “No Longer/Not Yet” at Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai. She is also involved in the process of building/designing a new home with her husband, the artist John Currin. “John and I had this idea that we’d create a mirrored room with paint on it. Our architect said that I should do it, but I don’t want to live with my work everyday because I would actually be very critical of it and I couldn’t relax. So we’re having someone else do it.” Below, Feinstein takes us around her SoHo studio.
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"Charles de Beistegui, he was very wealthy, he was very good friends with Cecil Beaton. That’s how I discovered him, I went on a kind of Cecil Beaton escapade a couple years ago and found this house that Cecil Beaton had designed for him in Paris that was a Le Corbusier house that they had turned Rococo and it was completely insane. This guy lived life to the fullest… He owned a palazzo in Venice called the ‘Palazzo Labia’ where he would throw these elaborate parties called the ‘Le Bal oriental.' ”
One of Feinstein's in-progress collages from a book of wallpaper samples. Feinstein explained that she enjoyed the way the fantasy world contrasted with the reality of what she does everyday. "I don’t know who’s going to end up in it in terms of a finished product. Trying to figure out the gutter of the book is a very hard thing."
"These are Han Christian Anderson books I had as a kid. Recently, I went on a kind of ‘I want to relive my childhood through my children’ thing so I found some of these on eBay. Shiba Productions was a Japanese animation company and for whatever reason, they were hired to do these really crazy tableaus. They're very weird, but I've drawn a lot of inspiration from them."
"Using this idea of cutting up photographs I did for Numero Magazine, we staged a photoshoot with Karen Elson, and I cut her up and placed her into these three-dimensional paper spaces," Feinstein said, explaining her recent editorial '7 Ages of Woman' in New York magazine.
"Michael Cunningham wrote the '7 Ages of Woman' NYMag piece, and my husband John did the drawings for me."
"This is the first paper drawing that ever became a sculpture. It’s from 2005, I just kind of cut out the drawing and I really liked the way it looked. In those days, I worked more in wood. I liked that you could see this drawing on there."
Feinstein refers to a cabinet full of miniature resin and paper sculptures as her "favorite part of the studio." These models inspired a Marc Jacobs set.
Feinstein's dog, Mr. G, on a work in progress.
"This little model is made with Sculpee" Feinstein said, comparing the model to an image of the finished product, Flower Girl which is on view at Lever House. "This one was a very difficult process. This one I had to use very toxic, very awful materials for the final sculpture. It was fiberglass resin with more powdered fiberglass mixed with these toxic pigments to make it this color. You have to be in a full-on hazmat suit… So I’ve been trying to make these in my studio using nicer materials like water-based resins, but the colors are nowhere near the saturation I want."
"What's incredible about being a sculptor, is grappling with materials all the time. This piece is not done and I don’t know if I’m ever going to make this as a finished sculpture."
A comparison of the original model to an image of a finished sculpture Feinstein created for Madison Square Park. "It was so exciting to see people interact with it. The hard part was just building the piece, which took about three months. I didn't love that we had to put these spines on it, but we didn't have time to engineer it so it would just be flat." Feinstein explained that due to Hurricane Sandy, the city also required that the large scale sculpture had to be built to withstand higher winds.
"This is a sample from the show at Gagosian in Rome from 2012-13. These paintings were turned into wallpaper. It took me about a year to do."
Feinstein holding a model for a piece which is currently in a seven foot tall sculpture in the group show 'No Longer/Not Yet' at Minsheng Art Museum. "This piece is based on a drawing by my son. He was ten when he made it and I find it incredibly deep."
ALL PHOTOS: KATHERINE MCMAHON