Rachel Feinstein / Army of God / 2008 / Copper and wood / 12 feet 3 inches x 17 feet x 7 feet 9 inches / Marianne Boesky Gallery

The Rachel Feinstein show at Marianne Boesky Gallery was a nice surprise that I walked into yesterday. I had come down to Gladstone Gallery to see the Dieter Roth drawings show and seeing that I still had time before needing to head back to work I decided to pop in. There are 7 pieces in the show and each is a bit creepy. There is one, Puritan’s Delight that feels like a carriage out of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow melting into the floor. I almost felt as if I was standing in a swamp on a foggy moonless night. I was particularly struck by Army of God. This piece really disrupted my sense of space as I moved in front of it. The reflection of light and sound of the thin sheets of copper felt like it embraced me and shifted my sense of bodily awareness. I felt the ground falling away and the heavens opening up. Well…ok maybe it wasn’t that dramatic, unless of course you dropped a tab of acid before stepping up in front of it, but it was still impressive.

Feinstein’s new sculptures depict a variety of subjects including mythic and religious iconography, amorphous figures, and a broken carriage, altogether pursuing themes of beauty, fantasy and ruination. Inspired by images of Brancusi’s studio showing the range of materials, forms and scale in his sculptures, Feinstein undertakes a similar diversity in her new works. Utilizing plywood, resin, and for the first time cement and copper, the artist allows each sculpture its own unique finish.

A felled wooden carriage, finished in black stain and fitted with a working lantern, takes its inspiration from 19th century Austrian royal stagecoaches. A trio of wreathed minstrel-like figures, connected to one another by a length of rope, offer a multi-faceted, Cubist viewpoint with cutouts of flattened shapes and forms jigsawed together. Other sculptures reconfigure putti and centaur-like figures, abstracting them almost beyond recognition.

In the main gallery will be a large-scale wall relief rendered in cut copper. The work, inspired in part by 15th century tapestries, depicts an abstracted Saint Michael slaying the dragon amid a tangled mess of wings, lances and tails. With its super thin copper construction and jagged, unfinished edges, the work evokes a seductiveness through the extravagant materiality and tormented surface. Each of the Feinstein’s sculptures retains its autonomy with an individual narrative, ultimately relating to the juxtaposed one in terms of the positive and negatives spaces of its form.

Rachel Feinstein is on view at Marianne Boesky Gallery, 509 West 24th Street through May 24th