Art First Projects

Jenny Wiener

The Four Cardinal Virtues

8 September - 8 October, 2011

Art First Projects is delighted to announce the forthcoming solo exhibition by Jenny Wiener.

For Art First Projects, Wiener turns her eye to the subject of the Four Cardinal Virtues (Wisdom, Justice, Courage & Temperance). The genesis of these 'forms' of virtue within Plato's Socratic text The Republic has a resonance with Wiener's own practice – what is being sought is an unloading of content and context to the point where the core essence of each subject is left exposed – a process of distillation rather than simplification.

As in Socratic dialogue, the method of examination, appraisal and deduction is as important as any eventual conclusion. Wiener's work often appears (intentionally) aesthetically cluttered, as the measurements and interconnecting lines – the tools utilized in her dissection – are left in plain sight, rather than hidden away beneath further layers or erased. These clouds of intricate and faint formulae drift in and out of focus as one focuses on the newly distilled subject matter within.

Richard Osborne writes of Wiener's work in 2010:

Jenny Wiener's work is subtle, analytical and almost perverse. Almost because it has a wonderful reasoning all of its own which stretches the logic of measurement to the point where the rigorous patterns of everyday coherence begin to dissolve into the metaphysics of improbability. There is a dash of whimsy, a soupcon of artistry and a great deal of intelligence that go into this mix of the mythical, the numerical and the perceptual. This is postmodern art in the best sense of the word; it is art about the possibilities of art and the probability of perception being confronted by the inadequacies of tradition. Let those who look for reassurance look the other way.

…[her work] could be summarised as examining the structural dimensions of the representation of possibility in an ever changing world of images; looking for the 'point-of-view' in a disengaged world of endless artistic reproducibility. Or more precisely a mode of thinking about the structure and function of mythological space in a contemporary digital world.

Her work makes you look at the way that you look and think about the way you see.

Jenny Wiener lives and works in London. She studied Drawing at The University of Arts, Camberwell and recently completed her MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art. She has been an associate artist at the Foundling Museum, and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Award.

Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the UK and the US, and is held in the collections of the Royal College, The University of the Arts, Belmacz, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, and in the Saatchi Collection