Cole Sternberg is a visual artist who is known for his paintings that involve a mix of mediums. Using social media text, paint and his interest in cultural sensations, the form in his pieces reflect a voice of disillusionment.
Arthena: Where do you derive your influence from?
Cole Sternberg: The garbage piled on the streets in Manhattan, the water flowing down from under a mansion’s fence in the Hollywood Hills, a pipeline to stretch across the US, another person shot in school or in a desert…I am influenced by society and the environment, by humankind and its relationship to humanity.
Arthena: What was the last exhibition you went to?
CS: I just returned from London where I saw a lot of things in quick succession. Polke at the Tate and Kiefer at the Royal Academy were both stunning.
Arthena: What are you currently working on?
CS: I’m currently having replica old masters painted in Xiamen, China, writing poetry on large-scale horizon-oriented watercolors, burning flags to form sculptural works and smashing found objects (as well as paintings). I’m also painting layered abstractions on an on-going basis. These will all evolve into forthcoming works and exhibitions.
Arthena: How do you see the art market and the art world changing?
CS:The art world is changing as the world changes. We are all inter-connected, we want things instantly, we are more impatient, more immediate in our desires. In the art world, this means positive and negative things. Work can be seen and disseminated in binary form across the globe instantly and art education is easily gained with no more than a bit of Internet access. We thus all seem to know more. Which, of course, is fantastic. But, work is created in the same vacuum, quickly and dangerously, chasing a stream of art fairs instead of developing true bodies of work.
Arthena: What genre of art are you particularly invested in?
CS: I’m invested in art as a general concept, a la Joseph Beuys’ idea that anything and everything can be art. Cave drawings and water lilies, a clean water system and a revision to the Geneva Convention, a table and a chair. I’m invested in all of it.
Arthena: How do you see art emerging from the tech space?
CS: I’m not quite sure what ‘tech space’ even means anymore. It feels as though ‘tech space’ and ‘space’ are now inherently intertwined. In terms of art harnessing new technological capabilities, I’m not quite sure. A photograph, for instance, has changed dramatically via the technology for better and worse at the same time. In the long run, I think time will ferret out the anomalies and short-lived tech trends in art and the sustainable influences of technology will remain.
In the least, I hope that technology will push us artistically further. What can we do now that we can see everything at once, record everything we see and see everything everyone else is doing?
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