A Mess of Art, Daniel Wiener makes epoxy wonders

“Pistil or Stamen?,” a truly peculiar sculpture by Daniel Wiener from his current show at Lesley Heller Workspace on the Lower East Side of  New York. The piece, about  eight inches long, combines clear glass and  an epoxy modeling compound whose greatest virtue, as far as I’m concerned, is how much it looks and shapes like Play Doh. Somehow, Wiener’s work escapes being just another instance of formalist abstraction. It seems deeply immersed in real-world materials and forms, as works linked to “low” craft often do.