Art Hag

Interpreting Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, Rachel Feinstein has transformed the lobby of The Lever House into a whimsical fantasy world. Inspired by the children's story, the artist explores themes of beauty, fantasy, and ruin via massive sculptures and installations featuring toy soliders, roses, children, ice, and a gilded coach.

The Snow Queen's Room is a vast, cold, white space that can be viewed outside through the exterior windows or in the lobby through intricately decorative alcoves containing ornate, dynamic sculptures of characters from the story. Adjacent to the installation is The Soliders, a colorful parade of giant toy soliders, hand-cut and hinged together like an enormous folding screen. The Mirror Room is a two-sided room featuring floor to ceiling mirrors embellished with painted images of "architectural ruins in a bucolic, sweeping landscape" that "suggest[s] nature overpowering the presence of man," (from the exhibit's press release). Outside in a wintry barren planter rests Golden Carriage, a smashed, golden, 19th-century royal Austrian coach "constructed of joined and curved pieces of wood that have been cast in metal and brightly gilded." Sitting in a green, leafy planter inside the lobby of the building is Flower Girl, an odd sculpture that looks a lot like a child's Play-Doh creation. Feinstein's quirky works transport the busy worker-bees shuffling through The Lever House's lobby to get to their offices temporarily to a magical fairy tale world. Learn more at leverhouseartcollection.com and check out this recent NYTs article to get a glimpse into Feinstein's fabulous life with husband, painter John Currin, and their three young children. The Snow Queen is on view through April 22nd.

The Soliders