Rachel Feinstein’s “The Snow Queen” fairy-tale installation is on view through Friday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Lever House
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through April 22
Admission: free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
the snow queen slideshow
This is the last week to see Rachel Feinstein’s inventive reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” on view at the glassed-in Lever House lobby gallery through Friday. Feinstein divides her sculptural representation of the 1845 classic fairy tale of good and evil into five distinct elements: “The Soldiers,” a group of nutcracker soldiers in the middle of the space (the smallest one looks a lot like Rudy Giuliani); the elegant “Snow Queen’s Room,” a dramatic white space that can only be seen in its entirety from out on the street and that includes the classical sculptures “Goblin and Children” and “Goblin and Mirror”; “The Mirror Room,” a two-walled mirrored area with the abstract sculpture “Girl and Reindeer” and the painted mural “Ruins,” covered with animals, houses, and, well, ruins; the colorful, Play-Doh-like “Flower Girl,” who is picking roses from the planter, surrounded by birds; and “Golden Carriage,” an upended vehicle in the outside plaza, with a flickering eternal light. “One day, when he was in a merry mood, he made a looking-glass which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever,” Andersen’s story begins. “The most lovely landscapes appeared like boiled spinach, and the people became hideous, and looked as if they stood on their heads and had no bodies. Their countenances were so distorted that no one could recognize them, and even one freckle on the face appeared to spread over the whole of the nose and mouth. The demon said this was very amusing.” Although the Arizona-born Feinstein includes no boiled spinach, she does make great use of of looking-glasses, lovely landscapes, demons, and distortions, mixing childlike wonder with Baroque finery.