Rachel Feinstein in Florence curated by Sergio Risaliti e Stefania Rispoli

9.06. – 18.09.2023

Museo Stefano Bardini, Palazzo Medici Riccardi,
Museo Marino Marini – Florence 

Museo Novecento is delighted to present Rachel Feinstein in Florence, a career survey dedicated to Rachel Feinstein (Fort Defiance, Arizona, 1971) and featuring a series of works being shown in Florence for the first time. The exhibition extends across three key locations in the city: the Museo Stefano Bardini, the Palazzo Medici Riccardi and the Museo Marino Marini (from 9 June to 18 September 2023). Promoted by the Metropolitan City of Florence and the City of Florence, organized by MUS.E, the exhibition is curated by Sergio Risaliti and Stefania Rispoli, and is the first career survey to be devoted to the American artist by an Italian museum.            

"Once again Florence becomes a 'pioneer' of contemporary art, with the first monographic exhibition in a museum setting in Italy of Rachel Feinstein, one of the most innovative and interesting figures on the current scene. - highlights Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Culture Alessia Bettini - This exhibition project compares the works of this remarkable artist with existing collections held in the three venues that are going to host them, creating an ideal and innovative dialogue between different artists. Meaningful, then, is going to enhance in these contexts a first-rate female voice of modern-day art.”   

"Rachel Feinstein has developed an original synthesis between Renaissance figures, architecture with neoclassical features, as is distinctive in major U.S. locations, vehicles of the contemporary," says Letizia Perini, councilor of the Metropolitan City of Florence delegated to Culture. "This dialog, which is expressed within her works, both paintings and sculptures, comes to fruition directly in Palazzo Medici Riccardi between the works and the environments she recalls. Her mirrors are significantly reflected in the spaces of the museum itinerary, just as her statues are placed almost naturally in the open spaces of the Limonaia."

"Years ago, before the pandemic, I walked the halls of Museo Stefano Bardini with Rachel Feinstein, an artist I have long admired," says Sergio Risaliti, director of Museo Novecento. "Her focus and excitement in front of the Museo Stefano Bardini's outstanding collection made me realize how much we need the gaze of an artist to regenerate our perception of heritage, which too often we consider as mere artifacts of the past. Yet, thanks to contemporary art, these artifacts once again become living things, present, dialoguing with us and still inspiring us. And Rachel is an artist who manages to stay within the avant-garde, within modernism, but at the same time is not ideologically and formally closed to a generous confrontation with the iconographic tradition of the past. In this sense, the exhibition establishes a kind of osmosis and dialectic with each of the three museums, grasping in each of them something peculiar and awakening in us dormant and less deeply explored interests: the anticlassical line of Renaissance and Mannerism at the Museo Bardini; the influence of primitive and polychrome sculpture at the Museo Marino Marini; the sophisticated and fantastic Rococo world at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. Thus continues the journey outside the walls of the former Leopoldine at the Museo Novecento."

Rachel Feinstein (Fort Defiance, Arizona, 1971) is one of the most interesting artists active on the international scene. Her works, which range from sculpture to painting, have a dreamlike quality that draws inspiration both from classical art and Renaissance painting and from modern fairy tales and cartoons. “I’ve always been interested in portraying some kind of fantasy, then showing that it’s completely constructed”, the artist declares. “There are always dark messages hidden behind beauty, and the act of sculpting is about listening to that inner voice that warns you about something lurking beneath the surface.” In her works, the richly imaginative fantasy world combines with references to medieval and modern art, to Baroque and Rococo, religious iconography and literature. References to the sacred and the profane, the romantic and the picturesque, the sober and the kitsch, are woven together to form the stylistic hallmark of a unique language rooted both in a rereading of artworks from the past and the lessons of the historic avant-garde, including surrealism.

The curators have chosen to put Rachel Feinstein's works in dialogue with the collections of Museo Stefano Bardini, Palazzo Medici Riccardi and Museo Marino Marini, thus inaugurating a close dialogue between the masterpieces housed within these places and the works created by the American artist: “I’m very excited to show in Florence because Donatello is my absolute king”, says the artist. She is showing a series of paintings and sculptures, including some newly produced pieces, which look to the Gothic and Renaissance, Florentine and northern European traditions. Drawing inspiration from the collections of the three museums, her works engage openly and generously with those of past masters ranging from Donatello to Michelozzo and through to the sculptures of Marino Marini.

   
Alongside the masterpieces in the Museo Stefano Bardini, which houses the collection of the eponymous antiquarian and connoisseur, including works by Donatello, Della Robbia, Tino da Camaino, Tintoretto and many others, Feinstein is showing works that reflect on the female figure or which are inspired by saints and icons, part of the artist’s inquiry into the consumption of religious images. These figures, seemingly carved in low relief on wood, appear to be inspired both by the Madonnas of the Flemish tradition and the Donatellian ones on display in the museum. “Like a sixteenth-century artificer, eccentric and mannerist, Rachel grasps the connection between Donatello and northern European artists like Baldung Grieg or Schongauer” says #sergiorisaliti, the director of the Museo Novecento and curator of the show. “A kind of pairing made by other artists as well, such as Pontormo or Rosso Fiorentino. And like those heretical artists, Feinstein also focuses on the ideological structures that cage sensibility and passion, body and spirit. Working from charcoal drawings that reproduce the details of some sculptures, Feinstein develops life-size pastels on wooden panels and then paints the images onto mirror surfaces, depicting the figures both individually and in groups. The eyes are deliberately not painted, conveying the disturbing sensation of being at one with the viewer’s gaze, leaving room for empathy and identification.

Exhibited in the garden and rooms of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the epitome of the princely Renaissance dwelling and the Medici family’s first residence, are some ceramic sculptures and a series of paintings that interact effectively with the late-Baroque dimension of the museum, associated with the tastes of the Riccardi family and the artists of the age, including Luca Giordano. In the garden – the pride and joy of the building, formerly a place for meeting and for recreation, and the pulsating heart of palace life – are four majolica sculptures by Feinstein. These evoke shades of Rococo and seem to immerse us in the atmosphere of a court life made up of lavish spectacle, banquets and polite conversation.

In the Medici apartments, on the other hand, are a series of paintings on mirrors that depict sumptuous villas surrounded by luxuriant gardens where men and women converse amiably. The artist fills these landscapes with a range of disparate elements – modern buildings inspired by luxury West Coast villas, ladies and knights in medieval attire, courtesans and sports cars. In the face of this spectacle, the viewer feels a sense of estrangement and is transported into a dreamlike dimension. The almost immersive environment further highlights the distortive effects of consumer-related desire that the artist wishes to evoke. Between these landscapes there are also two portraits of women. These have something of a Rococo flavour, as shown by their big headpieces, their clothing and poses, and are simultaneously marvellous, grotesque and anachronous.

The sculptures in the crypt of the Museo Marino Marini display Feinstein’s interest in experimentation, including with materials. These pieces face off with the masterpieces of the Tuscan sculptor, a succession of horses and horsemen, female dancers and the celebrated Pomone, mythical, archetypical figures embodying a female ideal stemming from the iconography of the Etruscan goddess of fertility. In this suggestive museum layout Feinstein is showing a series of polychrome sculptures with an explosive femininity and a grotesque, almost disturbing and at times messy beauty. The Angels are inspired by the models of the famous American lingerie brand, Victoria’s Secret, and appear to be priestesses of a new canon of beauty. Instead of the ideal forms of classical figures or of the equally unattainable catwalk models, the artist presents new angels that cannibalise conventional notions of beauty with an exuberant and powerful plastic idiom. Complementing these works are two majolica sculptures, whose sinuous forms recall late Baroque architecture, and a plaster Dancer by Marino Marini. To the primitive and almost tribal character of the latter, characterized by polychrome marks, seem to look to the painted, textured and colored bodies of Feinstein's figures

Engaging closely with the three museum spaces, which have always been given over to celebrating and preserving the memory of male power exercised over the centuries and evoked in the magnificent masterpieces from the past, Feinstein’s works create an unprecedented rupture. Their expressive charge breaks the equilibrium of forms, prompting reflection on themes such as pathos and eros through the representation of the female body and an unashamed interaction between spirituality and desire.   

 
The show is complemented by the third episode of Letizia Fuochi's podcast Labirinto900. The episode is titled Rachel Feinstein - The uncanny experience of vision and can be listened to on Spreaker.     

Special thanks to the Palazzo Tornabuoni, Florence.      
Main sponsor Gucci.

MUSEO STEFANO BARDINI

Via dei Renai 37, Florence

cultura.comune.fi.it/museums

1. +39 055 2342427

info@musefirenze.it

OPENING HOURS:

Friday / Saturday / Sunday / Monday

11:00 - 17:00

(Last entrance 4:00 p.m.)

PALAZZO MEDICI RICCARDI

Via Cavour 3, Florence

palazzomediciriccardi.it

1. +39 0552780552

info@palazzomediciriccardi.it

OPENING HOURS:

Daily

9:00 - 19:00

(Last admission 18:00)

Closed on Wednesdays 

MUSEO MARINO MARINI

Piazza San Pancrazio

museomarinomarini.it

1. +39 055 219432

prenotazioni@museomarinomarini.it

OPENING HOURS:

Saturday / Sunday / Monday

10:00 - 19:00

(last entrance at 18:00)

Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

the Museum is open upon request and with advance reservation for individuals, private groups and school groups.