MADISON SQUARE PARK CONSERVANCY’S
MAD. SQ. ART PRESENTS
RACHEL FEINSTEIN: FOLLY
May 1 – September 7, 2014
Large-scale sculptural installation of three architectural follies marks Feinstein’s first public art exhibition in the U.S.
New York—Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Mad. Sq. Art announces a new sculptural installation for summer 2014: Folly by New York sculptor Rachel Feinstein. Marking Feinstein’s first public art exhibition in the U.S. and comprising her largest sculptural works to date, the installation consists of three follies—structures that were popular in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture, built with decorative rather than functional purpose. Feinstein’s sculptures are executed in graphically printed and detailed panels of thin metal, ranging from eight to 26 feet tall. The three structures include a house perched on a towering cliff, a Rococo-style hut, and a flying ship moored high in a tree, supported by a mast extending to the ground. The installation will be on view daily from Thursday, May 1 – Sunday, September 7, 2014, in Madison Square Park at 23rd Street and Broadway.
Best known for her fanciful sculptures, Feinstein’s stage-set follies for Mad. Sq. Art are made of powder-coated aluminum with applied surface illustration. They are not inhabitable as the works are sculptural reliefs: they have active, three-dimensional facades and flat backs with structural supports. Installed on three park lawns, the structures will evoke theatrical scenery in which the park visitors are the actors.
Artist Rachel Feinstein states: “The Madison Park Conservancy has given me the opportunity to marry my early interest in theatre and performance with my later obsession with the handmade in one of the most spectacular settings. I picture Folly as an empty Fellini-esque set dropped into the middle of a lush green wonderland in the historical Flatiron district of New York City. I have always been driven by the stark contrast between good and evil in old fairy tales. Having this setting, a hidden natural jewel situated within the tall skyscrapers of yesterday and today, will be the perfect backdrop for my theatre, where the real people who occupy the park every day will stand in as Commedia dell’arte performers.”
Brooke Kamin Rapaport, Martin Friedman Senior Curator of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, comments: “It has been fascinating to work with Rachel Feinstein to realize these imaginary stage sets as they transformed from her layered, handmade paper models to large-scale, architectural, aluminum lawn sculptures. The artist’s whimsical vignettes bring a fairy tale narrative to Madison Square Park because Rachel has created a unique occasion for the public to enliven her work with their participation.”
Common curiosities of European landscape architecture since the late 1500s, follies swelled in numbers through the nineteenth century. Taking on a range of forms such as a gothic-style ruin or a grotto, they served the excesses of imagination, solely for amusement and ornamentation. As decoration, they sampled anachronistic styles and indulged a fanciful sense of history. Feinstein’s sculptures draw on the emptiness of a place that was once filled with excitement and promise, reminiscent of the ruins and decay in artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s landscapes. Folly contemporizes a bygone architectural form by receiving viewers into the artist’s constructed twenty-first century scenario.
About the Artist:
Rachel Feinstein (American, b. 1971) lives and works in New York City. Feinstein holds a BA from Columbia University in New York, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine.
Feinstein has mounted solo exhibitions at Lever House, New York; Le Consortium, Dijon, France; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; Corvi-Mora, London; Gagosian Gallery, Rome; and White Columns, New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York; Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York; Sprueth Magers, Cologne.
Rachel Feinstein is represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and has a forthcoming exhibition with the gallery in the winter of 2014/2015.
About Mad. Sq. Art and Madison Square Park Conservancy:
Mad. Sq. Art is the free, contemporary art program of the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Since 2004, Mad. Sq. Art has commissioned and presented more than twenty premier installations in Madison Square Park by acclaimed artists ranging in practice and media. Mad. Sq. Art has exhibited works by artists including Bill Beirne, Jim Campbell, Richard Deacon, Mark di Suvero, Bill Fontana, Ernie Gehr, Orly Genger, Sandra Gibson & Luis Recoder, Antony Gormley, Jene Highstein, Tadashi Kawamata, Mel Kendrick, Sol LeWitt, Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Charles Long, Iván Navarro, Jacco Olivier, Roxy Paine, Giuseppe Penone, Jaume Plensa, Shannon Plumb, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Alison Saar, Jessica Stockholder, Leo Villareal, and William Wegman.
Mad. Sq. Art is the free contemporary art program of the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Major support for Mad. Sq. Art is provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, Liane Ginsberg, Agnes Gund, Toby Devan Lewis, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Sorgente Group of America, Tiffany & Co., The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Anonymous. Substantial support is provided by Erica and Anand Desai, the Irving Harris Foundation, The Sol LeWitt Fund for Artist Work, the Henry Luce Foundation, Danny and Audrey Meyer, Ronald A. Pizzuti, The Rudin Family, the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust, John L. Thomson, Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch, and Tishman Speyer. Major exhibition support for Folly is provided by Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
Delta Air Lines is the Official Airline of Mad. Sq. Art. Ace Hotel New York is the Official Hotel Partner of the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Mad. Sq. Art is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Mad. Sq. Art is supported in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. The Madison Square Park Conservancy is a public/private partnership with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.
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For more information on the Madison Square Park Conservancy and its programs, please visit http://madisonsquarepark.org.
Image: Rendering of Rachel Feinstein’s Folly (2014) in Madison Square Park. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
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