Almost Something: Depictive Abstraction – curated by Andrew Chesler

by Ken Johnson

Friday, May 23, 2000

Catherine Moore, 140 West 30th Street

Abstraction and fantasy converge in this entertaining eight-artist show. Daniel Wiener’s small sculpture look like an extraterrestrial plant-animal hybrid; Peter Soriano’s funky, yellow sculpture suggests a futuristic device made of Play-Doh; David Dupuis draws a neat, quirky mindscapes; Giles Lyon and Alexander Ross both paint, and Gail Fitzgerald sculptures what might be realms of the microbiology; Gary Stephan’s process-based painting hints at some elemetnal narrative; and Kim Kever photographs sublime visions in a fish tank (Johnson).

Prizing an Animated Approach to Life

by David Pagel, Special to the Times

Thursday, May 23, 1997

For Daniel Wiener, drawings rarely serve such preparatory purposes. Rather than tracing the stages of an idea’s development, the New York-based sculptor’s images are complete unto themselves. At Angles Gallery, eight works form the last three years playfully demonstrate that when intuitions take shape, it doesn’t matter what stage of the process they spring from.

Each of Wiener’s abstract drawings sprouts a fully formed sculptural element. At the bottom of “Tohu and Bohu,” a curved funnel-like flourish proturdes form the paper’s surface, effectively transforming the washy blue drawing’s vertical stripes into a downpour of color that threatens to spill onto your shoes.

“Lucifer’s Teeth” embodies a similar menace. A section of its left edge bends back and thickens to form a toothy, lip-curling smirk that is only thinly disguised by its pastel blue color. Only half-jokingly. Wiener’s drawing also suggests that if it isn’t itself devilish, then some unseen being has just taken a bite out of it-and might be lurking nearby.

The best works evoke multiple responses as they compress three diminesions into two. From across the gallery, the seven hefty thorns that stud the suface of “Affliction” disappear into dark smudges of color. Likewise four unsavory lumps of sculpted plastic hide in a shadowy splash of black paint to give the otherwise elegant composition of “Shame” a jolt of unexpected tactility.

“Cigarette,”"Brigand,”"Shiver” and “Slippery Slope” add wire, rice paper and color photographs to Wiener’s crafty fusions. Sculpted roots, stumps and thumbs, as well as flowers, fungi, and tiny wilted barbells inhabit the ever-shifting world of these quietly perverse works. Never striving for solutions, Wiener’s 3-D Drawings show that the kinks are often more stimulating.

Los Angeles Times

Suspending the Limits on Imagination in Sculpture

by David Pagel, Special to the Times

Thursday, May 30, 1996

Daniel Wiener’s five pint-size sculptures at ACME Gallery hang from the ceilng on nearly invisible lines of monofilament. Loaded with associations that are difficult to articulate. These delightfully indescribable blobs of hydrocal, Sculpey and wire initially have the presence of words that get stuck on thc tip of your tongue.

Just beyond the reach of your mind or memory. Wiener’s tantalizing works lurk in the shadow of intelligibility. To wander among the New York-based sculptor’s lumpy, dysfunctional mobiles is to be struck dumb-in the best sense of the term.

These intentionally inarticulate configurations of color, texture, shape and weight strip viewers of our ordinary recourse to language. Amid Wiener’s suspended sculptures, the only logical thing to do is to give free rein to your imagination, leaving each piece free to elicit unanticipated experiences. They quickly begin to trigger odd associations.

“Pang” looks like a cross between the Stealth bomber and a vampire bat, with the added attraction of nine hooked feet, from which dangle nine blood-red forms shaped like bent cocktail forks with prongs on both ends. “As the Crow Flies” resembles a pair of tiny summer squashes joined like Siamese twins. from which extend spiraling wires recalling model train tracks, strands of DNA, hairs with split ends and beaded jewelry.

The more time you spend with Wiener’s libidinous sculptures, the more meanings proliferate. “Marionette” suggests that it’s the offspring of Puff the Magic Dragon and a hammerhead shark, to which the artist has grafted a pair of distended mandibles. The most complex piece, “Rumple, Crackle, Fold, Crackle,” appears to be the fusion of an inside-out brown paper bag and the vertebrae from a dinosaur’s tail, around which orbits a group of mutant seals whose skin is the color of eggplants.

If Wiener’s hand-crafted works begin by stopping language in its tracks, they do so only in the hope that the words you bring to them are of your own invention. This small yet generous exhibition celebrates idiosyncrasy as the basis of original thinking, which naturally enhances everyday experiences.

Johanna Drucker has published “Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity” which includes a reworking of this essay. Find this book on Amazon.com.

While large-scale installations have come to dominate the three-dimensional arena of contemporary art, sculptural objects have undergone their own transformation-from the autonomous, self-sufficient works of bygone. Modernism to referentially rich, materially suggestive, “things.” A vivid conceptual logic seems to be emerging from these works and an examination of a few examples of this new “thingness” should serve to elucidate its distinctive characteristics.

In one instance, Daniel Wiener’s whimsically fantastical pieces, defying spatial and attitudinal gravity, stretch their pipe-cleaner and chair-stuffing-meets-playdough arms through space to sketch an informal form. Is it a genetic experiment-cloning a bit of Judy Pfaff with od Dada classics, or perhaps Jean Tinguely and Hans Arp at their most mechano-morphic and anthropo-organic by way of Dr.Suess? Wiener’s work is as hard to digest as it is to characterize: there is just a bit too much of a preschoolers’ play-group feeling in it to allow a serious critical discussion of the work in purely formal terms. Contrasting textures? Delicacy versus stability? The piece itself would appear to mock such academic discussions with a knowing sci-fi creature’s indulgent nod. But there is too much serious investigation of sculptural principles in the work (space articulated through physical means) to reduce it to mere material associations. Bright, almost Day-Glo primary colors reinforce a connection to kids’ activities and play materials, and there is nothing sharp, dangerous, or threatening in either the form or the substance of the piece. The polypod base element, rising like some mutant pajama-clad octopus from the floor, supports a hairy armed something whose tentacles are raised in exploratory alien greeting. At every level of production and execution this work is resolutely non-fine art, its pedigree unlocatable within any historical aesthetic, and it refuses to be classified as a simple sculptural “object.” Even more, it refuses to be classified as a simple sculptural “object” in the terms once so clearly articulated by Donald Judd for the condition of Minimalist sculpture.

It might seem odd to bring up Judd here, but what Wiener is doing (and Elizabeth Turk, Jo Hormuth, Jennifer Pastor, Jill Levine, and Michael Ashkin, among others) references Judd’s idea of a specific object-only to subvert it through means which have as much in common with Jean Tinguely and the Baroness Fretag-Loringhoven as they do with Toys-R-Us and Mr. Potato Head. That the work manages to do this in formal terms-that is, by means of the stuff it uses and the way it uses it, is what makes it so successful. Playful, eclectic, appropriative with respect to materials, this sculpture displays a self-consciousness about the trajectory of 20th Century sculpture-most particularly that crucial moment at which Minimalist sculpture pushed art objects toward the limit of aesthetic identity, eliminating both the anti-art humor of collage/assemblage and the self-authenticating formal autonomy of the abstract formalist tradition. If Minimalism provided the definitive break between modern sculptural investigation and whatever comes after, then the current wave imaginative reworkings takes Minimalism’s premises into a curious and sophisticated conversation with both its notions of “specificity” and “objecthood” and with the traditions against which Minimalism itself gained an identity. The “specificity” which Judd strove to embody in his work was a rejection of the conventional compositional dynamics of internal formal relations in favor of a unified, single object-one which could only “minimally” be distinguished from an ordinary object. But the ordinary objects from which Judd (and Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, and others) wished his work to be distinct were mass-produced, industrially fabricated objects. They were objects without iconic reference, whose meaning-production value resided in their material “stuff-ness” rather than in any semiotic chain of values. A contemporary counter-tradition emerged within or alongside of Minimalism-a spectrum which stretched from Jeol Shapiro’s”minimal” architectural forms to Eva Hesse’s organic sequences and Lynda Benglis’s poured resin works-that evidenced those very properties of association which are now resurfacing with an imaginative vengeance in the work of a new generation.

Even more compelling than the associative values or iconic suggestiveness of Wiener’s work is the forthright association of these sculptural objects with a popular culture context. The “ordinary” object from which sculpture has to be distinguished-or with which it is in a dialogue-is no longer the bland, uniform, repetitive (and let’s face it, boring) forms of industrial material-but rather the eye-seducing, visually distracting stuff of playgrounds, garden supply outlets and party goods stores. Consumables, all vying for shelf space in the public imagination-these objects are as much a source of inspiration for artists as are the inherited terms of Modernist sculpture or even the longer tradition of figurative work preceding it. If one thin edge of this associative wedge was inserted into sculpture through those artists from the 1970s, who allowed iconic suggestions of some meaning beyond the formal in their work then another source for this activity comes from the media-fascinated art activity of the 1980s. Popular culture is no longer the “other” of fine art. it is rather a shadow double, a nurturing twin, or a rival sibling from which the best stuff-as well as the best opportunities-have to be snatched.

Art in America November, 1995

The Shape of Things to Come

by Raphael Rubinstein

The following interviews with four sculptors [Charles Long, Jessica Stockholder, Jeanne Silverthorne not included here] are a counterpart to my discussions last year with four painters [see A.i.A., Oct.'94]. Once again, I was interested in speaking with artists in their 30s and 40s whose work is publicly visible but who have not yet received extensive critical attention. And, also as before, I was seeking to bring together to bring together artists who share some common ground. This is not meant to be a report on the state of sculpture,” something one could never hope to accomplish in four interviews, especially in a period when (as one of the artists commented to me) the work of artists as diverse as Robert Graham and Felix Gonzalez-Torres is indiscriminately categorized as “sculpture.”

Accordingly, I narrowed my focus to sculptors who make object, who build and shape materials with their hands, who grapple with long-standing sculptural issues. Steering away from both the explicitly figurative, and the strictly installational, I suppose I was looking for artists whose work is still in communications with modernism. Yet I was just as intently looking for artists with an open approach to this open medium, artists in search of a new visual language, who believe that such a thing remains possible.

Charles Long’s search has led him to a fluid identity, where styles and materials are altered for each exhibition. But through his varied and, at times bizarre work (I’m thinking in particular of three teardrop-shaped rubber sculptures each topped with a single human hair purported from the head of Abraham Lincoln) there is a focus on what he terms the “abstract, freestanding mass.” Long’s latest project, “Amorphous Body Study Center,” began when he invited the London-based pop group Stereolab to compose music to accompany his sculptures. The group’s revival of futuristic electronic music from the ’60s-hence the title of their 1993 recording, Space Age Bachelor Pad Music-meshed with Long’s fondness for visual artifacts of the period, like Eduardo Paolozzi’s sci-fi pop sculptures and the props in A Clockwork Orange. Their interdisciplinary collaboration ultimately took the form of a gallery of functional items, each paired with one of Long’s biomorphic sculptures which, in turn was connected to a CD player and a set headphones. WHile relaxing on a sofa or slaking their thirst at a water cooler, visitors who donned the headphones could listen to Stereolab’s hypnotic tunes (imagine the soundtrack to a sci-fi version of the ’60s film A Man and a Woman). The centerpiece of the show, Bubble station, was a mountain of pink artificial clay which visitors, while seated on stools and wearing headphones, were invited to sculpt into new forms.

In here choice of materials, Jeanne Silverthorne is possibly the most consistent of these four sculptors, but the predominance of black rubber in her work hardly implies stasis. Silverthorne’s casting of the props in the artist’s environment-from bubble-wrapped paintings to light fixtures to picture frames-are imaginative re-creations of what she calls, with a hint of glee, her ” disaster site” studio. (In fact, Silverthorne’s studio, at least when I saw it, is relatively orderly which suggests that the “disaster” is of a philosophical nature.) Hanging from the ceiling, leaning against the wall, plopped down on wooden tables, the elements of Silverthorne’s black decor sneakily annex the space around them, while suggesting a set of rather Beckettian narratives.

At first glance, it would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than between the black ensembles of Silverthorne and the color-obsessed work of Jessica Stockholder. And yet Stockholder also makes use of the odds and ends in her studio and likes to ponder the afterlife of architecture. One way of viewing Stockholder, whose assemblages are never as makeshift as they first appear, is as a formalist who chooses to work with the materials of anti-formalism. Her installations and more compacted gallery works combine plastic, cloth, furniture, fragments of architecture, appliances, food, trees, fruit (this list could continue ad infinitum), all held together visually by the vibrant colors the artist paints across these various elements. Stockholder’s distinctive artistic grammar allows her to retain the specificity of the found objects she uses without letting their functional origins interfere with the overall formal energy of the work.

Daniel Wiener is adamant about using only things he has made with his own hands. As a result, he has acquired an arsenal of techniques for constructing his carnival-hued, biomorphic sculptures. It’s not unusual for a single work to involve casting, carving, modeling, dyeing and sewing, plus the various kinds of twisting and bending the artist uses to support his attenuated structures. His work can sit on the floor, hang from the ceiling or be attached to the wall; it ranges in size from pieces that you can hold in the palm of your hand to snaking 20-foot-long configurations. Wiener’s weird inventions are distinctly hybrid not only in their variety of materials and methods but also in their multiple allusions to plant and animal forms as well as to the realm of human sexuality.

To repeat, this is not meant to be an overview of contemporary sculptural practice, such as the one Wade Saunders undertook in these pages exactly 10 years ago [see A.i.A., Nov. '85]. But I hope that in the comments of these four highly individual, New York-based artists, readers will find , as I have, numerous reasons to value the three-dimensional object in an age which seems increasingly committed to the disembodied and the virtual.

Interview with Daniel Wiener begins here.

I don’t believe in the idea of integrity -the structural integrity of Richard Serra’s pieces, for instance-where the physical integrity of a sculpture is equal to its moral integrity. That doesn’t wash with me, and so I like to add something that sticks out, something that tells you that a willful, fucked-up person is making the thing up, that it isn’t just happening on its own. I like the especially when something is both arbitrary and necessary, even though these terms are supposedly mutually exclusive. It may be that “mutally exclusive” is my favorite category.

I grew up loving Duchamp and Jasper Johns, but I rejected them and found substitute parents in Picasso and Gonzalez, and in a group of sculptors from the ’50s like Ibram Lassaw and Herbert Ferber who later seemed to disappear. I was also heavily influenced by George Sugarman. About the time Minimalism came along, certain kinds of forms were just thrown out because they seemed cliched or used up, heavy-handed or over-emotional.

While I still enjoy what might be called a conceptual tradition, I find this overlooked earlier wok to be really more dense with ideas and layered with associations and formal inventions.

When I moved from California to New York in 1982, the dissonance on the street here was so much stronger than the dissonance in my work that my sculptures-at that time, large ensembles, almost piles, of found objects that hung on the walls-ended up looking tasteful and quiet in comparison. I spent a long time trying to get back the real drama of difference between the parts. My materials and techniques changed when I started focusing on how the individual pieces-which were now made of things like modeled artificial clay, painted plaster and dyed cloth-were creating a fictional world, a kind of narrative. I discovered that found objects broke this fiction Ultimately that’s why I stopped using them. I got really obsessive about making all the elements myself. For example, in one piece I needed to button two elements together. I thought I could use a store bought button, But even this small detail burst the bubble. When you saw the button you thought about things like Brooks Brother s shirts. It brought in the outside world in a way that is too specific for me. I always want the references in my work to float so that one form could refer to several things at the same time. I feel I succeed when an element seems familiar but you can’t quite place it.

My sources are varied. Among painters, I’ve looked at Mondrian a lot, which no one would guess. And, on the opposite end, Philip Guston, who has influenced me a great deal. It’s not the look of his work that is important to me but his ability to invent a personal iconography and use it again and again without it becoming tired. Another of my sources is jewelry, which through the ages I see as a great sculptural source. I also look at furniture and costumes.

I have always focused on the connections between the elements in my work, but recently I’ve begun to notice that the connections are as diverse as the forms. I’ve realized that I’m not just inventing the shapes and putting them together in improbable combinations, but that I’m also inventing the way they “sit” with each other. Sometimes the movement form one form to another seems narrative, as if there were a “natural” development. In other cases, one form grows out of another, like a leaf, a flower, a fungus, a tumor.

People have called my work ‘whimsical.” I’m not that whimsical a person. I always get nervous when I hear that word because I think it can be a way to dismiss what I do I hope it doesn’t get reduced to that. Some of my pieces do have clown like quality. to be a clown is to stumble over yourself. Clowns are experts in the choreography of falling down and I think I share something with them. My pieces aren’t slapstick but they do have a kind of physical humor and often seem to be on the verge of collapse.

Frequently I make things that are long and stretched out, attenuated. they are about a certain kind of emptiness, about making space with as little positive form as possible. But I am also interested in the fullness of space. In Ball, three large, purple, stuffed-cloth spheres are held up in plaster structure. The piece seems goofy and funny at first, but there is this empty ‘sack” on the floor loosing like a balloon that has lost its air. From the moment added this element, I thought the sack referred to an empty scrotum. Underneath the awkward goofiness, the piece is a monument to defeat, as if it were saying, “The battle is over. I have given up. I have been castrated. Look , here is my empty sack. There is nothing left for me to do. ” The combination of empty sack and full round balls on top could also refer to tumescence and detumescence. I should add that these interpretations come after the piece is made. I can never have exclusive rights on the interpretation of my work. I leave it open on purpose, so the audience has room to enter with their own experiences and memories.