10 OctOber 31 - NOvember 6, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | Culture | Night+Day | News | Letters | coNteNts | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Fantasy of Florida “Rachel Feinstein: The Miami Years” could have dug deeper. BY FRANCESS ARCHER DUNBAR R achel Feinstein’s fairytale sets and forsaken women have long alluded to the fantasy of Florida, but her current exhibition at the Bass is the closest her castles have gotten to Orlando. The show’s centerpiece is the gigantic Panorama of Miami, a 30-foot tour of Fein- stein’s favorite local landmarks painted on reflective mirror panels. Many of the attrac- tions she depicts, like Parrot Jungle Island and the Serpentarium, date back to a tradi- tion of Old Florida roadside showmanship that began to die out when Walt Disney World opened. But the piece is deeply rooted in personal nostalgia, and though it’s somewhat interesting to play “I Spy” through Feinstein’s childhood memories, it lacks any critique or commentary on the changes that have occurred in the city of her youth since she left for art school in New York City, aside from possibly the inclusion of a gigantic modern yacht tethered in the corner. Commissioned by the Bass, the painting ultimately feels like a piece of hy- perpersonal vintage kitsch that could find a future home as decor in a redesign of a ge- neric Flanigan’s waiting area. Feinstein’s oil-on-mirror 2018-19 paint- ings of Los Angeles megamansions and 18th- century aristocrats in the off room of the exhibit are much more interesting, if only be- cause one Babylon resembles another these days, whether destined to fall to quake or flood. But sequestered from the rest of the ex- hibit, they’re easy to bypass accidentally and seem to be forming a separate thesis from the mish-mosh of earlier and later work that sur- rounds and is reflected by the Panorama in the central room. Feinstein fills the space with a combina- tion of sculptures from her early career in the late 1990s and recent work from the early 2020s. Her Play-Doh-like blow-up doll mod- els stagger around the room in sky-high heels and bikinis, evoking the role the plastic sur- gery industry plays locally and her own per- sonal history modeling for Bruce Weber and other photographers in Miami and Europe in the 1980s. With her version of the city skyline in its showy glory looming behind them, they also recall South Florida’s long tradition as a capital for sex work and pornography. These hypersexualized, almost gro- tesque female forms contrast with the Dis- ney-like fairytale sets that fill much of the rest of the exhibit. Still, there’s a strong bent of exploitation and loss of innocence in these as well — in one densely forested propped display, a naked male figure with a slight beer belly looms just off stage; an- other piece directly alludes to the kidnap- ping and murder of a small boy in Hollywood during the artist’s childhood. The cut-out abstracted form of a white van leans against a wall as if waiting for the per- petrator to exit the Everglades scene and grab it for a swift Marx Brothers-esque exit. In contrast or conversation with this, the overall theme is romantic. In Hawaiian Wedding, two identical black velvet dol- phins leap triumphantly over plastic refuse, beads, and a con- crete carnation; it feels like Feinstein transcending the Miami of her youth for the dark cold of the New York art world. Behind them, the largest of the theatrical works is The Shack, a white structure in the center of the room that recalls Feinstein’s famous 1994 exhibition at Exit Art in New York, where the 22-year-old slept in her own gin- gerbread recreation of Sleeping Beauty’s castle for two weeks. It was there that she met her future husband, then 32-year-old painter John Currin. They were engaged soon after, and his paintings of her body, face, and red curls made him one of the de- fining painters of his generation. The title of this piece seems to allude to their “shacking up,” depicted directly in a projection of their wedding video, which opens the ex- hibit. At her Miami wedding, Feinstein’s bridesmaids dressed as Stepford wives; the 8mm footage unfolds like a fairytale. Nobody is sleeping in this piece; the stair- case leads to nothing but an unbroken mirror, reflecting back all the time that has passed in the last 21 years. Nearby, the organic form of Model reflects the viewer from every angle, alluding again to her background in fashion but also to Feinstein’s role as a muse who has been painted over and over in her husband’s exaggerated forms and whose dissected body at different ages lives on through the creative gaze of various male artists. Above, a disco ball drips tiny mirrored panels — the party is now in meltdown, at least from the perspec- tive of the hostess. This show is full of parrots, and the red bird perched on the dark piano in Jazz Brunch seems like another allusion to Currin and Feinstein’s partnership and contrasting relationships to art and the art world. Both are capable of making beautiful sounds, but while the piano is respected and recorded as music, the bird is something wilder and harder to capture and monetize, much like her sculptural works. Overall, Panorama of Miami and “Rachel Feinstein: The Miami Years” balance narcis- sism and nostalgia well. Exiting through the hand-drawn wallpaper of dense Banyan trees called Old Cutler, I only wished that Feinstein had taken the opportunity, as a daughter of Miami working with mirrors, to reflect on this place and its decadence and development with a little more of a critical edge. “Rachel Feinstein: The Miami Years.” On view through August 17, 2025, at the Bass, 2100 Collins Ave., Miami Beach; 305-901-0231; the- bass.org. Tickets cost $8 to $15; admission is free for children 6 and under, members, and Miami Beach residents. [email protected] ▼ Culture Installation view of “Rachel Feinstein: The Miami Years” at the Bass Zaire Aranguren photo THERE’S A STRONG BENT OF EXPLOITATION AND LOSS OF INNOCENCE.
