Cole Sternberg is a conceptual artist who lives and works in Los Angeles.
His practice contemplates humanity’s existential quandary: that of being hopelessly destructive, yet forever and inevitably linked with nature. Through varied media (including painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, film and writing), Sternberg positions the aspirations of humankind against the dominant and regenerative forces of the environment and the arbitration of time. For the artist, the conclusion is unavoidable. Human enterprises -- art, language, history, law, and republic -- are ephemeral / illusory endeavors that attempt to reflect, parallel, and challenge the ascendency of nature to no avail.
In recent years, Sternberg’s painting practice has centered on the environment acting as the true artist. Some pieces have incorporated poetry, suggesting imprecise narratives or descriptions that can’t be fully apprehended through words. His photographs interrupt time, while historical and cultural myths are pursued and deconstructed in sculptural installations and film. These confrontations frequently materialize in instances of erasure; erasure of marks and words, erasure of history, or the erasure of the natural environment. Sternberg’s works remain subversive in their unremitting search for truth, noting humanity’s attempts to create beautiful permanence while failing admirably.
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Sternberg’s diverse approaches reflect a disquisitive practice, through which he contemplates a vast subject as episodes or chapters. Recent chapters include:
The Nature of Breathing in Salt
This chapter began in 2015, as Sternberg embarked on a 22-day sea voyage from Japan to Portland. The transformative journey across the Pacific, provided him the opportunity to create artwork within the micro-environment of a shipping vessel while surrounded by the macro-environment of the sea. Along the way, he chronicled the journey through film, still photography and writing, while constructing a full painting studio. Works were exposed to extreme weather, left outside for days to battle storms, blow in the wind and ride the ship’s wake. Absent of the human hand, the process produced new marks while expunging others. Patterns emerged from and akin to natural elements. Sternberg continues this exploration in his ongoing environmental paintings, exposing the work to natural elements during their formation, unearthing sublime non-human and yet familiar patterns, such as the fragmentation of light through water or the track marks of a foregone parade.
The Free Republic of California
The Free Republic of California plays with notions of statehood and freedom by offering a vision for a more enlightened nation through the guise of Californian secession. Referencing Joseph Beuys, Sternberg coordinates a variety of strategies to construct and reconstruct everything that will be needed for a state’s rebirth: Alternative history and identity established in photographic documentation, ephemera, and a new flag; new social values prioritized in a constitution, budget, peace agreements, and international conventions supportive of the environment and human rights; and a proposed future conjured through sculpture, and coaxed through agitprop, performance and engagement.
Yearly Disciplines
Biennially, Sternberg conceptualizes a yearly discipline, meaning one that requires a commitment of practice each day. In his first discipline, he wrote and mailed letters to Gerhard Richter. The letters never mention either’s art or any specific geographical location, they also rarely mention a proper name. In content, they vary widely from poetry to recipes to reports of the news of the day. Collectively, they form a puzzling one-way conversation and diary. Each was drafted on custom letterhead, printed on a portable printer and placed in the mail, 365 days in a row. In his second discipline, Sternberg collected a rock each day, leaving behind a hair from his head in its place. He noted the date and location of each rock and photographed them individually. Cumulatively, they lay in a scattered crumbling pile on the floor, looked upon by a desk, on which sits all 366 individual photos. It was a leap year.
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Sternberg has exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the American University Museum, ESMoA, LA><ART, Los Angeles Nomadic Division, the Wende Museum, Praz Delavallade, Yeo Workshop, Honor Fraser, The Hole, Peter Blake Gallery, Hochhaus Hansa, There There, Primary, David B. Smith Gallery, Paris Photo, Zona Maco, ArtBo, Art Los Angeles Contemporary and MAMA. His recent editions and digital work has been released by Art Blocks, Verse and Exhibition A.
His works are held by major collections throughout the world, such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the El Segundo Museum of Art (ESMoA), the American University Museum (AUM) and Deutsche Telekom. It has been featured in publications such as, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Whitewall Magazine, Issue Magazine, Autre Magazine, Hercules, Denver Post, Miami New Times, LA Weekly, Art Ltd., Architectural Digest, Angeleno, Sleek, Metal Magazine, ArtNet, Cool Hunting, Huffington Post, Elle, Flaunt and Elephant. Click here for a downloadable CV.