A loopy parade of pre-Oedipal playthings surrounds the visitor to Daniel Wiener's jam-packed exhibition of unnamable sculptural objects at Dorothy Goldeen Gallery. Exuberantly colored, multi-textured and polymorphously perverse, his nonsensical configurations seem to be the offspring of abstract characters from mutant cartoons and leftover bits of unattached libidinal energy.
Each of Wiener's eight, goofily animated arrangements of precisely twisted wire, suggestively poured plaster, lovingly sewn fabric and obsessively wadded Sculpey (the adult version of Play-Doh), gives the impression that it has, if not a personality of its own, at least a particular style--a consistent, if inarticulate mode of being in the world.
Two pieces dangle from the ceiling like psychedelic spiders tangled up in their webs; two teeter on the edges of spindly legged pedestals; two sit on swollen muslin cushions like cuddly sultan slugs; and two others sprout from gloppy puddles of spilled plaster, growing like beanstalks to the ceiling of the gallery.
You can easily imagine that Wiener's hodge-podges of stuff are the result of a chance encounter between 19th-Century psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and the lovable puppets from "Sesame Street." It is as if Reich, who is now regarded as a benign, crackpot therapist, smuggled one of his "orgone accumulators" onto the set of the children's TV program and let the inquisitive characters experiment with his demented invention.
With an open invitation to poke and prod their endlessly fingerable protrusions, orifices, lumps and tentacles, Wiener's guiltless constructions appear to be driven by a compulsion to communicate. Unambiguously oral--but never fixated at this stage--they seem to silently stutter and scream. Some spasmodically gesticulate and others blankly stare, as if the messages they must convey are both impossible to express and simple, both foreign to language and common to us all.
Wiener's small to larger-than-life-size toys mischievously scamper across categories, boundaries and definitions. They embody a surplus of energy that is both physical and psychic. Their infectious vitality flows electrically between these two worlds, charging aspects of each with effects that are as specific as they are unsayable.
These funny works arouse curiosity and stimulate interest because they incessantly migrate from one strange association to another unforeseen connection, never resting for very long on anything with which our conscious minds are too familiar.
Wiener's delightful art is a joyous celebration of the powers of nonverbal communication. Like a hallucinatory game of charades, his installation demonstrates that the pleasures of naming are not exhausted by that which is captured in words. His playful objects insist that what's best about language exceeds and escapes its normal formations, spilling over into the space at the borders of sense, where bodies and nomination rub up against one another, shift positions, and generate significance.
* Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, 1547 9th St., Santa Monica, (310) 476-7145, through Dec . 31 . Closed Sundays and Mondays.
Masters in Miniature: Marc Pally's nearly colorless paintings at Rosamund Felsen Gallery pack a surprising visual punch. They also sneak up on you with a sense of wit that slowly--and doubly--repays your attention.
At first, the fluid doodles and obsessively drawn lines in Pally's abstractions seem to be clever combinations of blown-up views of microscopic life-forms and melted-down patterns from '70s Op Art. As your eyes adjust to the richly textured, interconnected webs that make up the illusion-riddled surfaces of his paintings, however, their supple humor clicks into focus.
Pally's newest body of work creates the impression that he has scrutinized the tiniest micro-organisms and studied the most minuscule cellular structures only to discover that these fundamental building blocks of life have a highly developed sense of taste and an extremely eccentric conception of fashion.
In the fantastic, black-and-white world his paintings convincingly conjure, squiggly, amoeba-like beings and serpentine blobs of protoplasmic matter not only cavort gracefully in imaginary dances. They also appear to be wearing wild paisley patterns, outlandish plaid outfits and irregular checker-board designs.
It is as if Pally, in his diligent attempt to visualize the primordial stuff of life, has discovered that decoration is as essential to human existence as is the proper combination of elements of cells. His various shaped acrylics on canvas thus eloquently argue that nature and culture are two sides of the same coin.
