About Metafloric

At first glance, few would think to pair the work of Ellen Wiener and Bill Albertini. Yet beneath their markedly different practices lies a shared intellectual curiosity and an expansive vision of the natural world.

Welcome to Metafloric.

This two-artist exhibition brings together works informed by nature, science, myth, fantasy, and the passage of time. Albertini employs digital technologies to invent forms, while Wiener shapes hers through meticulous handwork. Despite these differences in process, both artists transform the overlooked, the microscopic, and the commonplace into visual metaphors for larger questions of existence.

Their work suggests that the sublime is not found beyond the material world, but embedded within it: in the smallest natural forms, in manufactured objects, and in the fertile intersection of observation and imagination.

Bill Albertini

Bill Albertini’s sculptures often begin with forms that appear technical or industrial: brackets, pipes, valves, plumbing fixtures, and fragments of hardware.

Through digital modeling and 3-D printing, Albertini transforms these familiar components into objects that appear convincingly functional while serving no practical purpose. They evolve into hybrid botanical structures, anthropomorphic assemblages, and amorphous organisms that might have been unearthed from another place or an unknown epoch.

Often contained within box-like architectural frames, the works blur distinctions between the manufactured and the organic, technology and nature, function and imagination.

Albertini’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia.

Crumple (2016) by Bill Albertini

Ellen Wiener

In Ellen Wiener’s multimedia paintings and prints, torrents of wind sweep ephemera through visionary landscapes. Bags of wind, notebooks, frames, and other familiar forms move through compositions where the boundaries between observation and imagination begin to dissolve.

Her miniature sculptural collages are housed within intimate, book-like structures and incorporate elemental materials including iron, silicon, aluminum, and calcium. Through these carefully constructed works, familiar substances are transformed into poetic meditations on nature, time, and our experience of the physical world.

Wiener’s work is represented in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; The Parrish Art Museum; Yale University’s Special Collections; and numerous rare book repositories throughout Europe and the United States.

Wind Song (detail) by Ellen Wiener

Together in Metafloric

Although Wiener and Albertini arrive at their work through distinctly different processes, Metafloric reveals the surprising territory they share.

Both artists look closely at the materials and forms that surround us, then reimagine them. The natural becomes fantastical. The manufactured begins to feel organic. Everyday materials suggest something ancient, microscopic, botanical, or entirely unknown.

Together, their works invite viewers to look more closely at the world around them and consider what might exist just beyond the boundaries of the familiar.