Ben Weiner, Giant Pearls, 2008, oil on canvas, 64 x 98 inches

I first met Ben at the Aldrich Museum last fall but have been familiar with his work for a few years (I have written about his work in previous newsletters). One of my clients even purchased a work on paper after I fell in love with it at a satellite Miami fair back in 2006. Recently, he was gracious enough to let me come for a studio visit which gave even more meaning to his luscious and sensual paintings for me.

Amidst notes written in Sharpie tacked to the walls containing lists for grant possibilities, artists he wants to learn more about, and rules for getting work done in the studio such as only checking email 3 times a day, I sat down with the artist to discuss what he is currently working on. Right now he is in preparation for his upcoming show at Mark Moore Gallery in May of 2010 so the studio was fairly stark . The white walls contained grids of nails on which to hang canvases of different sizes. The one work in progress hanging on the far wall is about 20 x 40 inches with mustard and amber tones. He explained to me (after I asked what the subject was) that the subject was lipstick and mascara submerged in perfume. A color printout of the photograph that he was basing the painting on hung next to the canvas; it was full of demarcations with different numbers. It turns out that this is the system behind the organization of his paint colors. He showed me a palette which astounded me–there were at least one hundred different colors used and this particular work was a fairly monochromatic one.

Ben’s current projects are video works he will have in the Los Angeles exhibition alongside his paintings. He has been creating video works for years but his upcoming show will be the first time that he has shown this work to the public in an exhibition. He uses time-lapse that is often so slow it makes movement or change almost imperceptible. To him, the subtle changes that occur using certain subjects in a video is much like the subtle changes a painter makes during his/her process in the creation of a finished work. One of his ideas for a video that he shared is time-lapse imagery of a gel ant farm. The ants would not be seen, just the tunnels they create in the gel. Ben likes that the gel is somewhere between a solid and a transparent object. It is the same thing he focuses on in his paintings which gives a liminal quality to his works.

His paintings are all based on photographs he takes of real objects in his studio. In the past he has used actual film because of the quality it produces –it makes it easier for him to capture the exact textures and surfaces in paint. Now, he has used a digital camera for the first time. It was a teacher at Wesleyan, Tula Telfair, who first encouraged him to work from photos and the hyperrealist style has stuck with him ever since. He mentioned the artists Rosenquist, Koons, and Glenn Brown as artists who influenced him.

Ben seems to enjoy the fine line he walks between reality and fantasy in his works. Initially he was drawn to subjects with rich textures and items that had certain qualities when light fell a particular way on them such as hair gel, pearls, paint, aluminum foil–things that were already a part of his environment. He continues to use objects from his own life but his focus has narrowed. He enjoys the way that mundane objects (deodorant, MSG crystals, corn syrup, etc.) take on different qualities when looked at up close. They reveal different things about our world. He sees a connection between beauty products and art supplies in that beauty is often taboo in high art and can be relegated to kitsch. Ben attempts to put these objects from both the high and low brow worlds on the same plane. He creates illusions in his work where unnatural objects are presented as organic; he tries to naturalize manmade objects. They become an environment in which the viewer loses himself. One is drawn in by the seductive quality of the works but is then cut off at a certain point. The viewer is not always able to determine what it is that he/she is looking at and Ben is okay with that. His newer work focuses in more closely on objects which creates even more abstraction and intrigue for the viewers of his wonderful works.

Please visit www.benweiner.com to learn more about the artist. In addition you can visit www.markmooregallery.com and www.colletteblanchard.com as both galleries represent the artist.