Daniel Wiener

Wiener attended Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. 1977) as well as the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (1982-1983). Since the early 1980s Wiener has been known for his multicolored, multi-textured sculptures that straddle the abstract and the representational. Blake Gopnik remarked that, "Wiener’s work escapes being just another instance of formalist abstraction. It seems deeply immersed in real-world materials and forms, as works linked to 'low' craft often do.". Early on in his career Wiener showed a deftness for texture, for example making hard elements appear soft, or vice versa, which in turn played with the viewers' tactile responses to the work. Early forms, though not quite representational, were neither fully abstract. An early review by David Pagel in Artforum describes, "A loopy parade of pre-oedipal playthings surrounded the visitor to Daniel Wiener’s jam-packed exhibition of unnameable sculptural objects." Over the years, Wiener's amorphic objects inched towards becoming more 'nameable' ones, as they began adopting more anthropomorphic or utilitarian qualities. Of this shift Kathleen Whitney noted, "The small, almost figurative details in his current imagery represent an evolution from his previous work, which was always referential, psychological, and biomorphic in nature." Such consistent qualities have also drawn comparisons to the work of Claes Oldenburg, Jean Dubuffet and Mike Kelley. == Exhibitions ==