Monroe Isenberg
September 11 – October 18, 2020
Common Ground Gallery
Monroe Isenberg’s work engages minimalism, light, space, sound, and reacts to phenomena natural to our world. He holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Maryland in College Park. Isenberg is the recipient of multiple awards, grants, and residencies including the 2019 tristate Trawick Emerging Artist prize, International Outstanding Student Achievement Award winner (2017), and included in the 2020 Aesthetica Art: Future Now anthology in the UK. His artwork has been exhibited in Iceland and is held in public and private collections across the United States. Most recently, Isenberg was invited to participate in the fellowship program at the Lunga School in Iceland in fall 2019 and is currently an adjunct professor at Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minnesota.
Statement:
Stillness becomes awareness,
Silence— Amplifies connection.
Struggle to understand becomes
Energy
To create.
Words disappear,
Making encounters mystery.
Encounters with light, space, elemental materials, and their cycles unveil the cloaked animacy of the world. By attending to phenomena that guide life, I intuit and build from relationships that unfold out of circumstance. This process unveils invisible connectivities and contributes to languages that center animacy, stillness, becoming, and solidarity. My practice interweaves sculpture, installation, performance, mark-making and new media to invoke contemplative participation and questions that excavate kinship with the world and each other.