Rochelle Feinstein
You Again
February 12 - March 26, 2022
Opening: February 11 from 4-7pm
2504 W 7th St, Suite C, Los Angeles, CA 90057

Hannah Hoffman Gallery is pleased to present You Again, a solo show by the painter Rochelle Feinstein. This presentation, the first of Feinstein’s work at the gallery, comprises the Los Angeles leg of a six-venue international exhibition. The contents of each installation include both historical works and new paintings created in reaction to these earlier achievements. 

Feinstein’s devotion to painting runs deep. Perhaps paradoxically, she expresses this dedication by regularly reassessing and expanding the medium’s basic premises. Feinstein came of age as the formalism of the 1960s and 70s was under attack, derided as an optical, material, and conceptual cul-de-sac. She has since worked to reinvigorate painting with new meaning and a revitalized connection to the world at large. Even when compositionally austere, Feinstein’s works are full, venturing varied approaches to color and form and embracing materials far afield of the stretched canvases and color-infused pastes and liquids traditionally used in painting. As Feinstein puts it, she’s always on the lookout for “a good problem to work with,” choosing subjects that blend visual and material concerns with the puzzles of history, politics, culture, and communication that feed her imagination, capture her unease over current events, and pique her trenchant sense of humor. 

The works in You Again give a taste of the wide range of topics and conundrums Feinstein has translated into the languages of painting, finding new intonations and cadences within these idioms along the way. Tagged (2019) juxtaposes a canvas of pristinely measured, brightly hued stripes reminiscent of 20th-century Minimalism with a panel of Warhol-esque silkscreens of boxing matches. Bravura sprays of bright color stretch across the two canvases in a graffiti-like cancellation that points to frustration over the art world’s focus on aesthetic competition even as real-world violence and aggression thrive. In one of her most recent works, I Like Amazon and Amazon Likes Me (2021), Feinstein marries Minimalism’s clean aesthetic to the messy human repercussions of a disarticulated social sphere at the mercy of big business. Two panels sit side by side, one is printed with a nondescript (but vaguely recognizable) brown tone and the other is streaked with slightly lighter and darker earthy shades; the former work duplicates the brown of cardboard packaging, and the latter marks Feinstein’s attempts to replicate that color by hand with oil paint on canvas. It’s a powerful comparison—one that simultaneously brings to mind the lack of handcrafted goods in our post-industrial lives, our increasing isolation in the age of virtual economies, and the erasure of human labor from our consciousness as we seek ease over interaction with one another. 

Feinstein’s works sit in conversation with one another, but each is a distinct project. She comes to new ideas fresh, even if a guiding ethical worldview and an abiding love of painting and its history undergird her long career as a whole. You Again presents an artist with little interest in carving out a singular aesthetic or signature theme to set herself apart. Instead, Feinstein continually searches for untrod terrain, new places where the visual abstractions of painting offer a portal into, rather than an escape from, the tumultuous world around us. 

Born in 1947, Rochelle Feinstein is a longstanding and deeply respected member of the New York art community. A major survey exhibition of Feinstein’s work originated at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2016), and subsequently traveled to Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich (2016), Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2017), and the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2018–2019). Other solo exhibitions have taken place at Kunsthaus Baselland (2018) and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (2012). Feinstein is Professor Emerita of Painting and Printmaking at Yale University (2017). Among her numerous accolades, she is a recent recipient of the prestigious Rome Prize Jules Guerin Fellowship in Visual Arts, American Academy in Rome (2017–2018). Her work is in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Rochelle Feinstein, You Again is a six-venue, international exhibition of new and historic work by Rochelle Feinstein, opening in January and February 2022 at Campoli Presti, Bridget Donahue, Hannah Hoffman, Nina Johnson, Candice Madey, and Galerie Francesca Pia. 

Rochelle Feinstein, You Again is a six-venue, international exhibition of new and historic work by Rochelle Feinstein, opening in January and February 2022 at Campoli Presti, Bridget Donahue, Hannah Hoffman, Nina Johnson, Candice Madey, and Galerie Francesca Pia. 

Rochelle Feinstein: You Again 
Bridget Donahue, New York: January 28–March 12 
Candice Madey, New York: January 28–March 12 
Nina Johnson, Miami: February 3–April 2 
Francesca Pia, Zurich: February 11–March 26 
Campoli Presti, Paris: February 12–March 26 
Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles: February 12–March 26