SANTA MONICA, CA .- Mark Moore Gallery presents new works by emerging young talent, Ben Weiner. In producing his stunningly realistic oil paintings, Weiner harnesses the subjective nature of perception in order to render everyday objects unfamiliar and strange. By photographing paint and luxurious ephemera at close range, then using the resulting image as his subject, Weiner creates works that pose a confusion of object, subject and medium. Although his technique is photorealism, the pearls, make-up, perfume and paint depicted are rendered at such proximity that they appear as alien landscapes and ominous seas. These fantastic terrains are undeniably disturbing and disorientating as the viewer searches the canvas for a recognizable subject matter, yet they remain enticing in their opulence and beauty. His works paradoxically serve as both accurate representation and unidentifiable abstraction, unsettling the often unquestioned nature of realism, beauty and truth. Weiner's pain tings transcend mere representation; the dramatic lighting and rich hues, combined with the inaccessibility of his sublime surfaces, produce an uncanny effect indicative - yet simultaneously critical - of a society inundated by images, governed by popular culture and the media.

"GlamTrance" defines a liminal, ecstatic experience of visual disorientation in which the fetishized glam objects I depict in my paintings collapse with the art objects that depict them.
Ben Weiner

Ben Weiner received his BA from Wesleyan University, Connecticut. He studied under Mexican muralist José Lazcarro and has worked closely with artists Jeff Koons, Kim Sooja and Amy Yoes as an assistant. He has exhibited his work widely across the United States and in Mexico and has participated in numerous art fairs, including Pulse New York and Pulse Miami Beach. Weiner lives and works in New York City; this will be his first solo show on the West Coast.