David Wiseman

In 2020 Wiseman was recognized by Architectural Digest France as one of the 100 great artists and designers and in 2019, Galerie Magazine included Wiseman as one of their selected Creative Minds.

Partnering with longtime friend and industrial designer Spencer Nikosey of KILLSPENCER, Wiseman co-created the Fletcher Briefcase, a limited-edition briefcase made of bullhide leather and a top handle made of cast bronze and inlaid terrazzo that features petrified wood. Released April 2020.

Admiration for designers who were part of the Vienna Secession, like Dagobert Peche and Josef Hoffman; the French artist duo Les Lalanne; as well as traditional patterns from India, France, Korea, and Japan are a large part of Wiseman’s inspiration. “A century ago artists found a way to make ornament relevant to contemporary life, before postwar standardization wiped it away,” Wiseman says. “I’d like to make it relevant again.”

Wiseman’s work was institutionally recognized in 2006, with the inclusion of his “Cherry Blossom Canoy” installation at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s National Design Triennial, Design Life Now, described by Cooper-Hewitt curator Brooke Hodge as “exquisite, almost Rococo.” In 2008, Wiseman began exhibiting with R & Company, a Manhattan-based design gallery representing contemporary and historical designers, where his first two solo shows were held - David Wiseman in 2012, and Wilderness and Ornament in 2015.

In 2019, Kasmin Gallery (New York, NY) presented a solo exhibition of Wiseman’s work, titled Plants, Minerals, and Animals, which featured works reflecting his fascination with the natural world, global decorative arts traditions, and a reverence for honoring timeless craft techniques. The exhibition presented bronze and terrazzo furniture, a monumental mirror, limited edition wallpaper, and sculptural chandeliers.

Much of Wiseman’s work consists of private commissions for residences across the country and internationally. In 2013, Wiseman's Branch Illuminated Sculpture was chosen for U.S Embassy in Madrid, Spain, by designer Michael S. Smith, as part of the Art in Embassies program. For a wall installation in a private residence from 2010, he worked closely with a family to develop a site-specific installation that referenced their history - a literal family tree represented by blossoming wisteria vines twining around a linden tree, and crowned by a porcelain owl. Wendi Murdoch, a collector of Wiseman’s who commissioned a plaster and porcelain ginkgo motif for her ceiling, said, “David captures nature in the most beautiful and elegant way, using old-world techniques and craftsmanship, but with a modern twist.” In 2010, commissioned by decorator Peter Marino, he created a signature porcelain Lily of the Valley vine installation for Dior flagship stores in New York, Shanghai, and Tokyo.

Wiseman collaborated with Haley Alexander Van Oosten, an LA-based scent designer and founder of artisan perfumery L’Oeil du Vert, to create a scent-diffusing objet d'art with three separate custom scent options. Together, they also created a spherical, pebble-textured gold- or silver-plated box containing “gems” of scent-soaked ebony. Wiseman created the Lost Valley Grotto in which the monkey holds out his hand which serves as a well for a custom fragrance made with essential oil.

The first pair of the series was exhibited at Wallpaper* magazine’s Handmade installation at Salone del Mobile in Milan. They were later acquired by the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

2019 Plants, Minerals, and Animals, Kasmin Gallery, New York

Wiseman’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, T Magazine, Architectural Digest, The Financial Times, LA Times, Town and Country, 1st Dibs, Departures magazine, Artsy, the Huffington Post, and The Robb Report among others. Wiseman was also featured in the book Wall Design, published by DAAB Books.

December, 2018. After collaborating with the House by sculpting lily-of-the-valley ceilings and mirrors for the boutiques in Shanghai, Tokyo and New York, he conceived two creations as part of the Dior Lady Art project. The large bag was made of hand cut leather that approximated his bronze collage patterned screens. A medium bag had Dior gray lambskin stitched with a mix of cannage and floral patterns, and embellished the charms with lily-of-the-valley buds in porcelain-effect metal inspired by Monsieur Dior's favorite flower and Wiseman's signature ceilings.

2018 Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

2018 Under the Night Sky, Friedman Benda, New York, NY

Parallel Narratives: The Future of Period and Contemporary Design with Eric and Noah Wunsch, Thomas Jayne, Alexandra Gilbert, Rodman Primack, and Mitchell Owens, 2018, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

Artist Talk with Tanya Aguiñiga, Michael Maltzan, Adam Silverman, 2018, Rhode Island School of Design, Los Angeles, CA

In 2017, together with his brother, Ari Wiseman former Deputy Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation founded Wiseman Studio. Together they run an independent studio that manages the work of David Wiseman, promoting sales, collaborations, and ventures with galleries, museums, and educational organizations. A 30,000-square-foot multi-building former factory complex in Los Angeles’s Frogtown district designed by Ted Porter of Ryall Porter Sheridan Architects — will present exhibitions of David Wiseman’s sculpture and allow access to his process, including bronze casting and porcelain fabrication.

Artist Talk, 2017, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Decorative Arts and Design Council, Los Angeles, CA

In a review of his 2015 show Wilderness and Ornament, Artsy notes, “Bronze and porcelain are used to preserve otherwise fleeting moments, like the ephemeral bloom of a cherry blossom, a cracked egg, the twisted form of a lily of the valley, or a hanging hare after the hunt.”

2015 Wilderness and Ornament R & Company, New York

2015 R & Company @ Hedge, Hedge Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Artist Talk with Brooke Hodge, 16 May 2015, R & Company, New York, NY

Environment to Object, artist talk in conjunction with R & Company @ Hedge, 30 October 2015, San Francisco, CA

… OR MAYBE IT’S THE WEATHER? The Los Angeles Design Movement in 2015, 25 March 2015, LA><ART Keynote Event, Westweek 2015, Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood, CA

Artist Talk in conjunction with the Intense & Fragile exhibition, 28 January 2015,Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, Texas

A Conversation with David Wiseman and Douglas Durkin, 15 January 2015, FOG Design+ Art, San Francisco, California

Wiseman was described as “producing the most inspired decorative art in America." His work ranges from expansive site-specific installations to unique and editioned furniture and scultpural lighting. He has “internalized centuries of global design, and the resulting, exquisitely detailed creations—whimsical confabulations of metal, porcelain, and crystal—are deeply rooted in his love of the natural world. Designer and head of art fair Design Miami Rodman Primack says Wiseman “is not afraid of the decorative, as this is not a pejorative term for him, nor is he afraid of outright beauty.”

In 2014, Milan-based rug manufacturer Amini and R & Company put together a collaboration between artists represented by the gallery and artisan Tibetan weavers working from Kathmandu, Nepal. Wiseman’s original rug design was based on his bronze Garden Gate Doors, and integrated many of his signature patterns and motifs, including branches and a small bird, but Wiseman says that “after spending some time with [the weavers] and visiting their spiritual places, I integrated some of their patterns. The clouds on the bottom right corner of the rug appear on their temples and textiles.” The limited-edition rugs, in two color-ways of indigo and gold, and Delftware-inspired blue and white, debuted at Design Miami in December 2014. In 2017, Wiseman created another Paradise Rug as part of the same collaboration, which was an extra-large asymmetrical organically shaped carpet with animal and bird motifs amongst rivers and stones in a blue and grey palette.

In 2014, Wiseman collaborated with friend and fellow RISD grad Adam Silverman, former director of Heath Ceramics, to begin their ongoing series, Huevos de Los Angeles. The collaboration to date has consisted of a series of Silverman’s self-described “'lumpy, maybe beautiful” ceramic eggs interacting with Wiseman’s customized bronze elements, in what the artists term “transformations of Fabergé eggs. Several of the eggs are wrapped in Wiseman’s Islamic jali inspired tracery pattern, while holes in the surface of another egg cradle snugly-nestled, highly polished studs of bronze.

2014 Intense and Fragile, The Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, Texas

2014 Watt's Up?, Bernardaud Foundation, Limoges, France

Critical Making: Making Critical Outcomes, with Rosanne Somerson, Tanya Aguiniga, Samantha Dempsey and Shawn Greenlee, 10 October 2014, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island

2013 Art in Embassies, U.S. Embassy, Madrid, Spain

2013 Risk and Certainty in Uncertain Times, RISD + Ventura Labrate, Milan, Italy

The New Luxury, with Samantha Brooks, Joan Behnke and Grant Kirkpatrick, 10 May2013, La Cienega Design Quarter Legends 2013, Los Angeles, California

The Practice of Patronage, with Zesty Meyers and Dan Rubenstein, 16 April 2013, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York

2011 Object D’Art - II, Gallery Seomi, Seoul, South Korea

New West Hollywood Library Artists, with Frances Anderton, Shepard Fairey and RETNA (Marquis Lewis), 18 October 2011, West Hollywood, California

2010 Masters of Linen, Luce Dal Lino, Salone del Mobile, Milan, Italy

2009 New Works/Old Story: 80 Artists at the Passover Table, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, California

2008 Beyond Organic: Design in the State of Nature, DesignMiami, Miami, Florida

While still in school, Wiseman began selling his wall-mounted Deer Hat Hanger in Los Angeles and New York boutiques. His senior thesis, titled Wall Forest, included the deer heads alongside a selection of resin-cast tree branches that appeared to emerge from the walls, and in 2007 was featured in DAAB Books' compendium Wall Design.

2007 California Design Biennial, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA

His work has been acquired by Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, NY), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI), and Wunsch Americana Foundation (New York, NY). In addition to the 2006 Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, Wiseman's work was exhibited in 2014 at the Bernardaud Foundation in Limoges, France.

In 2006, Wiseman teamed up with renowned Bohemian glass artisans at Artel Glass in Prague to create a series of faceted blown-crystal pieces. The Glacier collection includes small vodka glasses, whiskey tumblers, sconces, vases, and hanging pendant lamps. Artel sells these items from their store in Prague, and Wiseman’s studio sources them for inclusion in his Collage Chandeliers and other pieces.

2006 Design Life Now, National Design Triennial, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York

In 2005, after a brief stint in New York, Wiseman returned to Los Angeles where he created his first porcelain and plaster ceiling installation in a private residence in Hancock Park, LA. This ceiling was commissioned by the clients’ decorator, Rodman Primack formerly Director of Design Miami, whom Wiseman has maintained a close working relationship. Wiseman describes his subsequent exploration into creating bespoke ceiling installations as “porcelain and plaster canopies of branches—trees that looked like they were emerging through the surface of the wall. Those branches evolved into chandeliers, and that led to a whole other body of work.” From this initial project, he has developed a robust studio, creating lighting, sculpture, furniture.

2005 California Design Biennial, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA

Out There, Doing It lecture series, with Mark McManus and Instant Days (Andrea Lenardin Madden), 5 October 2005, LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, Los Angeles, California

Born and raised in Pasadena, California. Wiseman received his BFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003.

2003 Future Ec(h)oes, Renewable Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York

David Wiseman (born September 11, 1981 in Pasadena, California) is an American artist and designer whose work is notable for its intricate craftsmanship and dialogue with traditional decorative arts. "Celebrated for groundbreaking sculpture, furniture, lighting and site-specific installations that combine natural forms with classical craftsmanship, David Wiseman is a creative tour de force." His work spans from bronze filagree patterned screens and gates to bronze and terrazzo furniture, from animal sculptures to porcelain vases.