RADIUS The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

November, 2005

This exhibition features the work of twelve highly talented regional artists, six men and six women who express themselves through their paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, digital art and street art.

Ben Weiner has written of his work, "My paintings meditate on the rapturous designs of the ephemera of our time, transforming prosaic objects such as aluminum foil, oil paint, and hair gel into ambiguous, often erotic worlds of the mind." These large paintings are painted with oil on linen, in an ostensibly photo-realistic style; yet Weiner is not wholly comfortable with the term "photo realism." Using the process of an actual photo shoot to create the scenarios he paints, Weiner then uses the process of a painter to abstract his image and create a work of art. Many of the objects he uses as subject matter are the stuff from which illusion is created (oil paint to make painting, hair gel to transform personal appearance). The subjects of Weiner's paintings and the process through which he creates his images are thus closely linked, and the erotic subtexts which can be found in both high art and commercial imagery are linked together and explored in his work.