格線1976 -1979 這是藝術家首度創作的系列作品。這些鑄造玻璃藝術品最開始是對格線和重複結構的研究,採用一種建築用塊狀玻璃Vista Brick為製作材料。與藝術家在後續作品中使用的水晶玻璃不同,這種綠色的建築用玻璃不具備水晶玻璃的光學性質,而是呈現出平面感、小巧的塊狀結構,同時體現出Weinberg在早期試圖掌控作品形狀的努力。 GRIDS1976 -1979 This is the first series of workcreated by the artist. Beginning asstudies about grids and repetition, these castings were made with architecturalconstruction block, Vista Brick, a green glass without the optical qualities ofthe crystal used in subsequent work. This construction glass contributed to thesense of the flat, minimal look of the pieces and represents Weinberg’s earlyefforts to exercise control in his forms. 拼圖1979 -1982
An extension of the initial, defining Grids, the Puzzle Vessels signaled thetransition from a two-dimensional to a three dimensional grid. Weinberg beganusing optical crystal in these castings and, with the qualities of thismaterial, created a sense of a 4 dimension.
零件1982 -1984 這幾件作品依然是對光學拼圖所具有的三維格線的探索。如果說“拼圖”是對格線內部的挖掘,那么“零件”則是格線的外化。 COMPONENT STRUCTURES1982 -1984 These pieces were a continued exploration of the 3dimensional grid of the Optical puzzles. While the Optical puzzles werecreations of an interior grid, with the Component Vessels, the grid becomesexternal.
Moving away from the grid and into an exploration ofbalance. This series marks the beginning of using architectural references; thecolumn and lintel, the post and slab. The addition andsubtraction of mass and void was explored while striving to maintain bothvisual and actual balance.
These piecesmean to question the sense of balance with the Post and Slab pieces. They seemto be visually precarious and have a sense of falling, and they challenge theperpendicular relationships of the earlier pieces. They are meant to feelunstable, but in reality are perfectly balanced and not all precarious.
In the early 1990s, Weinberg begins his obsessionwith the cube. A pure geometric form that houses an interior vocabulary thatchanges within, but not from without for the next 10 years. The interiors beginwith the Architectural influences from the YucatanPeninsula in Mexico andMayan ruins. Weinberg begins this series with clear optical crystal to explorethese architectural forms. Fantastic interiors evolve with movement created by gossamer veils and the introduction of inner air bubblesthat become a signature of his work. With this series, the artist begins totake advantage of the substantive qualities of crystaland experiment and push the limits of the material.
As in all Weinberg’s work, the artist begins a serieswith simple castings and pushes the work to become more and more intricate inboth internal vocabulary and external form.
The artist introduces color to his cubes as a means toadd contrast, and not as an exploration of colored glass. The cubes become larger and the interiorarchitectural elements more complex. Itis here that we see the first signs of a Greco-Roman architectural vocabularyin his work.
This series is the first divergence from the geometryof the cube. After 10 years of workingwith a single geometry, and although he still creates some cubes, the artiststrives to work with other Euclidian forms and movesaway from the cube.
These pieces reflect a marked change in direction forthe artist. This is the first time theartist self imposes specific guidelines within which to work. The most important of these guidelines beingthat all the visual imagery, in the form of icons or symbols, needed to befound objects and not manufactured by the artist himself. They could be eithermanmade or found within nature.
There are four subtexts within the series: The Still Life, the Portrait and the SelfPortrait, the Story, and Perfection, comparing man’s perception of perfectionwith the actual perfection found in nature.
Atthis time in his life, the artist relocates to live by the water and isprofoundly affected by his environment. Boats and buoy forms surround him as hepursues avidly his love of fishing and the sea. As a result, he is inspired bythe cross section of the hull of the fishing vessel and it becomes the nextform to be his focus.
Anextension of the small boat forms, this series of pieces exemplifies theartist’s need to completely explore a body of work, and push the technicallimitations of the material and his techniques. The increased scale provides a larger surface for the artist to expresshimself with greater visual impact.
“The ‘Buoy’ started as myinterpretation of Styrofoam markers that are used byworking fishermen to signal route, net or trap. Shaped by the power of anunforgiving sea, juxtaposed with names and identifiers scrawled by industriousworking hands. The floats are objects, which describe a legacy of both natureand personal history. The buoys become both a referential object and acontained universe. Interpreted in cast glass, they take on the mantle ofsymbolic markers, accessible to all who search, always bringing us back to theexact location we left them. Or at least giving usfaith that we can return to a place that we once had visited. It truly isamazing to be able to revisit a precise spot in an ocean so vast with fewvisual references for guidance. ”
Experimenting toget back to his ceramic roots through the use of the spray metalizing techniqueused with the buoys, Weinberg creates this small body of work. The idea oftaking hollow, classic ceramic forms, translating them into massive solids andfinishing the exterior with a skin of metal treated to appear reminiscent ofterracotta is central to this this work. The mass has become the skin and theskin has become the mass.
This work, likethe large boats is another example of the artist pushing technique. Here, hechanges the form of the boat series toward the round and focuses on controllingthe gossamer veil.
In 2005, theArtist is invited to teach at TsinghuaUniversity in Beijing. As is stated by his dear friend andcolleague, Rudy Nakai: “Once you stepoff the plane in The People’s Republic of China, your life will never be thesame.” For the first time in the artist’s work, there appears the profoundinfluence of China.
This body of workhas been ongoing from the inception of the artist’s career. Weinberg has alwayshad a fascination with the femaleform and over the years created these castings, never with the expectationto exhibit, but simply for the enjoyment of creation. The first body casts were done using thestreet walking population embedded in the neighborhood close to thestudio. Later, with the encouragement ofa local gallery to use them in an exhibition, he created more and strove torecreate every detail and marking on the skin in his typical manner to perfecthis castings. These pieces areextraordinary not only in their true to life size, but in their intricatedepiction of detail and the artist’s ability to recreate every blemish andbeautiful marking of female form and surface of the skin.
This is theartist’s current body of work. Here, he works within the framework of theMandala series, but focuses on drawing. Taking traditional cane makingtechniques used by glass blowers, the artist begins to define an individuallanguage in his castings. These threedimensional drawings focus on the basic elements of drawing: Point, line, plane, and intersection.