[1] Early on in his career Wiener showed a deftness for texture, for example making hard elements appear soft, or vice versa, which in turn played with the viewers' tactile responses to the work.
An early review by David Pagel in Artforum describes, "A loopy parade of pre-oedipal playthings surrounded the visitor to Daniel Wiener’s jam-packed exhibition of unnameable sculptural objects.
Of this shift Kathleen Whitney noted, "The small, almost figurative details in his current imagery represent an evolution from his previous work, which was always referential, psychological, and biomorphic in nature.
[5] In a 2015 review in The New York Times of his exhibition Kooks and Villains at Lesley Heller Gallery, critic Roberta Smith stated that, "This veteran sculptor excels at manipulating [the] malleable material.
"[6] Made up of both freestanding furniture-referencing objects and wall reliefs faces, the works in the exhibition showed Wiener's ability to generate a great variety of forms from the same material starting point.