Ben Weiner

Ben Weiner (b. 1980) lives and works in Queens, NY. His hyperrealist paintings and mixed media works use consumer body improvement products as both subject and medium, walking the line between realism and abstraction. Weiner approaches painting as a precision performance, challenging himself to depict synthetic products such as silicon, keratin, hair gel, and energy drinks using traditional representational techniques. He paints highly accurate, magnified images of these body products, observed from touch-screens. The resulting compositions verge on the unrecognizable, reflecting our alienation within a consumer body culture that abstracts our human needs into chemistry. Weiner’s mixed media works include sculptural objects made from crystallized energy drinks, and drawings made by breaking down inks into luminous fields of color using mood-altering drugs. These works expand Weiner’s exploration of the body’s objectification through process-based experimentation.

Weiner received his BA from Wesleyan University. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Mark Moore Gallery, The Tarble Art Center, and Benrimon Contemporary. Recent group exhibitions have been at Grey Area, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, the Carnegie Art Museum, the Orange County Museum of Art, Mana Contemporary, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art. His work is in collections including Sammlung/Collection Mondstudio, the Progressive Collection, The Microsoft Collection, and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation Collection. Weiner has been written about in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Interview Magazine, W Magazine, Artsy, and The Huffington Post. He was the recipient of 2012 Fiscal Sponsorship with NYFA, and a 2010 NYFA Painting Fellowship.