The work of Bronx native Rochelle Feinstein is deeply informed by abstraction, while also conveying a keen sensibility to contemporary culture, particularly to our everyday use of language. Over the span of the last four decades, Feinstein has probed the relevance of the abstract painting tradition vis-a-vis a rapidly changing cultural environment. She has used the lexicon of abstract painting to approach subjects of both personal and social import such as the televised police pursuit of OJ Simpson (El Bronco, 1994); the Iraq war (Hotspots, 2003 - ongoing), and the economic downturn of 2008 (The Estate of Rochelle F., 2010).
As a professor of painting at Yale University from 1994 to 2018, Feinstein played an important, albeit peripheral, role in the contemporary art scene through her engagement with and support for younger generations of artists whose works have been widely recognized.
Rochelle Feinstein: Image of an Image is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work in the United States and will provide New York audiences the unique opportunity to reassess the work of a highly original artist. It follows a critically acclaimed three-venue retrospective of Feinstein in Switzerland and Germany in 2015-2016, in which each venue presented a modified version of the exhibition.