Rachel Feinstein
Rachel Feinstein’s work encompasses sculpture, installation, drawing and painting, bringing together influences from different periods and visual worlds. Baroque and Rococo meet Christian iconography, traditional fairy tales and contemporary pop culture. At the centre of her work are themes of femininity, beauty and the construction of fantasy worlds, which Feinstein often develops into complex, immersive environments. In 2018, the Rococo bases created by Nymphenburg modeller Franz Anton Bustelli inspired her to make life-size garden sculptures. In 2020, the Jewish Museum in New York presented Maiden, Mother, Crone, her first retrospective. Feinstein lives and works in New York.
Together with Gagosian, Rachel Feinstein developed the Secrets edition for Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg, a group of eight hand-painted porcelain figures. The starting point was a life-size group of figures that Feinstein created in 2018 for her first major solo exhibition at Gagosian in Los Angeles. In Secrets, she engages with the visual world of Victoria’s Secret and its staging of idealised female bodies. The flawless models are transformed in Feinstein’s figures into grotesque, burlesque characters, while luxurious lingerie and jewellery dissolve into vivid, almost mud-like fields of colour. In translating the works into porcelain, Feinstein combines Nymphenburg’s tradition of figurative sculpture with a contemporary exploration of beauty, consumer culture and femininity.
In 2026, Feinstein continued her collaboration with Nymphenburg on a new scale for her exhibition Fates at Gagosian in Athens. Inspired by caryatids, female figures used as supporting columns in classical architecture, the monumental majolica figures Helen and Petra were created in the manufactory’s workshops. Including their bases, each reaches a height of 2.40 metres. Feinstein worked directly with Nymphenburg’s artisans on the two figures. Their construction in terracotta, their exceptional dimensions and the direct painting onto the fired material made them a technically and sculpturally demanding project.
