Parrot Jungle, the former Miami Serpentarium, Venetian Pool and The Biltmore Hotel are some of the iconic sites that artist Rachel Feinstein frequented in her youth. These destinations cultivated her fascination with both the seductive qualities and illusory facades of spaces for entertainment. In high school, Feinstein’s parents moved to a gated community, and she recalls, ‘Every couple of years, someone would buy a house on their street, knock down the older house, and build a ridiculous “Mediterranean-inspired” monstrosity that took over the entire buildable lot.’ Her first solo exhibition in the city, ‘The Miami Years’ at The Bass Museum of Art, features dystopian-fairytale sculptures, paintings, stage-set cutouts and mirror installations in conversation with this complex relationship between the real and the artifice.

‘Feinstein is deeply connected to the city and its collision of extremes, many of which have shaped who she is today,’ shares Silvia Karman Cubiñá, executive director of The Bass Museum of Art.

In 1982, Feinstein relocated with her family from her birthplace, Fort Defiance, Ariz., to Miami for her father’s University of Miami medical residency. Three years later, Feinstein became a fashion model mingling with Calvin Klein’s popular Obsession models, and grew up frequenting nightclubs Fire and Ice and Club Nu, and catching punk shows at the old Cameo. In 1989, after graduating high school, Feinstein left for New York to pursue her art studies at Columbia University, majoring in religion, philosophy and studio art. Absorbing the work of female practitioners such as Kiki Smith, with whom she studied, Feinstein developed an observational and witty creative language. She began her art career participating in group shows, landing her first solo exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery, where she worked as a receptionist. Major exhibitions spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia followed. In 2022, drawing on her interests in religion, her exhibition ‘Mirror’ at Gagosian in London included metal sculptures and paintings on reflective surfaces of historical Christian figures by renowned Renaissance artists, rearticulated by Feinstein with ominous mirrored eyes and negative spaces.

Peeling away pretense, Feinstein delights in revealing illogical dichotomies of living, with humor she shares with husband and fellow renowned artist John Currin. This wonderful sense of hyperbole and irony is embodied in Hawaiian Wedding (1999), an unsettling soft toy sculptural diorama on loan from the Rubell Museum. Co-founder Mera Rubell shares, ‘We’ve owned Hawaiian Wedding for the past 25 years, so we’re excited to see it in the context of “The Miami Years”.’ Reminiscent of the art deco insignia of a Florida hotel, black dolphins dive over peculiar flesh like extensions and glittery seaweed. Rubell continues, ‘Ironically, one of the most memorable weddings I’ve attended was Rachel and John’s in Palm Beach, which was magical and felt like a Hawaiian paradise here in Florida.’

For Feinstein, art and life are synonymous, and she embraces the aesthetic and physical influences of Miami’s cultural complexities within her practice. ‘What’s particularly special about this homecoming exhibition is how Feinstein’s work connects comprehensive personal narrative and decades of public history to reflect on the “Magic City,’’’ continues Cubiñá. The Bass Museum of Art debuts a 30-foot commissioned mirror artwork, Panorama of Miami (2024), which incorporates photographs and illustrations of the Miami landmarks Feinstein experienced, recast with both satire and sweet nostalgia. Witnessing the evolution of Miami as a contemporary art mecca alongside Feinstein’s three decades of artwork on view is both concurrent and a moment to heed the warning. Feinstein concludes, ‘It makes me laugh that people spend $10 million to put their loud and obnoxious stamp on the world, but nature will always win.’