A Loop That Loops That Loops
An Interview with Daniel Wiener by Lauren Hirshfield, June 9, 2026
artwork by Daniel Wiener: (L - R) Doubling Back, 2026; A Garland To Fend Off The Dizzies, 2025; Backing Into Each Other, 2026; courtesy of the artist and Satchel Projects
On one of the hottest summer-in-spring days last month, I left the cool of my Bushwick apartment for Chelsea. Frieze Week was over but an exhibition I had yet to visit was calling me back to the west side of Manhattan. I trekked across the L to the C to 26th and 9th and up to the 9th floor of the 526 W26 building (thank god for that elevator!) to meet Daniel Wiener. His latest solo show Out in Front of the Back of Beyond, which just closed May 30th, was up at Satchel Projects and I was eager to see the latest from his Faces series on walls other than his studio’s.
I arrived to find Daniel chatting in the back with the gallery director. In all of our meetings, Daniel is rarely, if ever, late - a trait of many artists from the old guard that I enviously admire. He also owns a suite of patterned shirts in varying geometric compositions and palettes that read like “hip artist”, and it’s actually cool; that day was small trompe-l'oeil cubes in white and shades of blue.
Since becoming acquainted with Daniel this year, we’ve had many discussions about his practice. He frets that he doesn’t speak well about his work but it's actually that he sometimes has more to say than he knows what to do with. He is, after all, speaking from 49 years of experience. Poetry and philosophy in particular weave their way into his artwork nearly like a medium itself, and throughout our conversation at the gallery I am reminded of this.
Daniel Wiener at his solo show Out in Front of the Back of Beyond
Almost immediately after we begin talking, he mentions an Immanuel Kant quote: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
It’s a favorite of his; he’s shared it with me on a couple other occasions, but I don’t mind hearing it again because his work practically personifies the musing. Daniel’s self-designed mold casting process has, since 2016, defined the construction and compositions of his objects. By the very process in which they are made, each face simply cannot be symmetrical, uniform, or replicated in the ways molds typical allow for. They cannot be perfect, just as humans aren’t. Despite our best efforts at idolizing it, to encounter true symmetry in a person would result in the uncanny, and thus a loss of self. Daniel’s sculptures whimsically uphold Kant’s truth, their imperfections a triumph.
Over the past few years I’ve grown very preferential to sculpture because of its capacity for grand transfiguration, especially when the limits of composition or form are strained. What Daniel does so well is just that, nestling in the sweet spot between variables and constants to allow 30+ years of sculpting in polymer clay to remain fresh. Always pushing the limit of by-hand mold casting, and of his own physical means, his work looks as though our reality has been strained through a Daniel filter into a psychedelic bubble of multiplicity, mirroring, and the duality of self.
Polyphony Beyond The Baton’s Thrust, 2025, polymer epoxy clay, dispersed pigment, 48.5 x 55 x 40 inches
The poster child for the show, Polyphony Beyond The Baton’s Thrust, is indeed a masterclass in this feeling. The freestanding juggernaut epitomizes the patience and perseverance that results from tireless exploration into new crevaces of his fabricated universe. The forms aren’t interested in the trials and truths of the real world.
“Making a fictional space within real space - that’s the goal of sculpture.”
“For me”, he clarifies.
There is a calm and calculated way to how Daniel speaks, but the excitable cadence that every good artist has is unmistakable too. I find myself tickled by the quiet charm of his quirks - an occiasional “Oh…” will re-route a sentence as if reminding himself of exactly how he’s thought about something before. He almost never curses, and he’s strategic about how he verbalizes his ideas.
We linger for some time on the theme of repetition. He states: “I want each artwork to multiply itself”. I ask him to explain further.
“For me, the mold is the idea of using the same set of forms to make something different, like a variation on a theme. There’s a mold, and then there’s a mold of a mold - like a recursion.”
He points out an example in two large bas reliefs in the show: Anthem For My Belly and A Garland To Fend Off The Dizzies. I admittedly glossed past this pair of works, struggling to make sense of the large flat spaces in their centers. Studying the latter for the first time in person, I realize it hung opposite from its counterpart with their facades mirroring (literally!) each other. The clever curatorial choice brought sudden clarity of the pairs’ place in his practice. Daniel, in this newest chapter, is hitting his stride. Observing his solo show revealed a succint, perspicacious ideation far beyond the 10,000 hours threshold. And one that’s as serious as it is fun.
(left) Anthem For My Belly, 2025; (right) A Garland To Fend Off The Dizzies, 2025; (both) polymer epoxy clay and dispersed pigment, 31.5w x 30.75h x 1.5d inches
Over the course of an hour we talked about a lot of other things, some for a moment and some we chewed on for a while. The comparison to painting comes up, with its knack for feeling like a magic trick to render, say, a smokey bit of sfumato in oil paint.
“I don’t know how I do it but I feel like I make magic, too”. To some that may sound egotistical, but knowing Daniel, it’s an inquisitive consideration.
As he said that I recall sitting across from Backing Into Each Other, staring again at its entwined tendrels, thinking how unlike it is from its wall-mounted siblings. What satisfies me about Daniel’s artworks is their fluid capacity for adapting within the rubric of his practice. That sky blue and fuschia sculpture, its two faces as bookends to a grappling of each other’s innards, personifies the ouroboros underpinnings of his practice in an entirely new way. Yet, it is at home amongst its kin.
Perhaps, that is the magic.
I said some version of this out loud and Daniel agrees but, after a pause, amends: “It’s kind of a gentle, slimy grappling”.