Issue 12 • March 2014
CURA is proud to present Jonathan Ehrenberg's gorgeous work. An interview with the artist follows below.
What questions does your work explore?
I’m interested in representing the images we see in our minds in tangible, physical form. These images (whether from memory, fantasy, dreams, borrowed from literature, etc.) are fluid, disjointed, unstable: you can hold many incongruous images in your mind at once. So putting all of this into a physical form is bound to fail on some level, but I’m interested in that failure: in the question of how to use different modes of representation (painting, drawing, video, sculpture, animation, the spaces between these media) to describe the gaps and idiosyncrasies of our inner lives.
How would you start a letter to your younger self?
Best not to interfere with the past—I’ve seen too many episodes of the Twilight Zone!
Whose work speaks to you?
I always go back to artists who explore their inner lives and don’t hold anything back: Philip Guston, Francisco Goya, Piero della Francesca, Federico Fellini, Louise Bourgeois, just to name a few…
How do you think art relates to action?
Making art and looking at art is a way of reframing things, a chance to look beyond our practical day-to-day needs and to see the world and ourselves in a surprising way—and I think action begins with changing the way we see things.
Fill in the blank: “The world would be a better place if everyone knew…”
…how to laugh at themselves.