Six questions for
Jonas Morgenthaler

How do you describe your own art practice?

I use assemblage and juxtaposition as a method of information processing. By questioning the objects surrounding us and the ways we engage with them, I see a powerful way to challenge the normative narratives of our times. In an installation, I reference common object-space concepts, like a window, a shop sale display or mannequins, however maybe in an abstracted way. My sculptures often play with the relationship between objects and the spaces they occupy, in that way, my work merges with everyday life whilst undermining it. Objects that once served as semiotic devices constituting symbols of status or belonging, or items that stem from a family memory or political position begin to break free, leaving viewers wondering whether they ever really knew the substance of what they once daily held in their hands. In a sculpture, there are always various access points to the questioning of present(ed) narratives, whilst no detail element is key to understanding the whole. What holds a work together eventually, is not the process of meaning-production but rather the opposite, a constant glitching and colliding of storylines and object-narratives. I am interested in the delay, as well as the acceleration or even over-stressing of perception-processes as artistic methodology, in order to let the process of sense-making run into emptiness. Through the re-using of everyday objects, of situations or compositions that appear familiar, through the assumption of a contextual alias within a work, I aim to overload the plot’s machinery so that a sculpture-object breaks to narrative debris. I see this as a way to hint at a narrative system, rather than to a single narrative itself. I strongly believe there is curious things to come from there. As a society, we are constantly trying to adhere to one coherent narrative at a time, and it is my goal to escape that.

Which question or theme is central in your work?

Let’s say that objects come to exist not only in front of cultural backgrounds, but as fabricated, ideological products of our system. They function as world-building devices of corporate as well as political interest, camouflaged as default in society. Aptly narrated commodities and commodified rituals, (take the eco-friendly family car, a superbly equipped kitchen or the material trappings of a heterosexual marriage) serve as tools to regulate behaviour. Whereas consumerism pushes people to buy into a version of society that’s purely market-driven, social norms push people toward certain roles and lifestyles – one values the convention, and in turn, the consensus values you. I align my practice closely with Sara Ahmed’s critique of the ‘happiness script’, where she interrogates the pressure to conform to the specific version of happiness (sexually, ideologically, economically) promoted by our society in order to take part in it. In a store like IKEA, for example, where you’re immediately presented with a variety of models on how to situate and embed the body into spatial layouts, I learn which combination of materials, shapes and colours are supposed to make my body feel cozy and protected. I learn the correct size of a bed and the proper version of a child’s room so that everybody’s content (no matter what, my guests will bring expectations). Dutifully loading my shopping cart, proceeding by the cashiers, I carry a heap of not yet assembled dreams into this place I rent to call home, arrange books, plants, candles and posters, adapt the lamps’ distance to my table’s distance to the window, compose after the unattainable perfection in half-memorised posts of hip cafe furniture-compositions in neighbourhoods I don’t live in. To what do I relate myself, after all? to the books’ content or to the fact that there are books on the shelf? to the story posted to instagram? or to the idea of it all? How to create relationships to things in a world where all things are potentially on the market? I painfully bump into corners constantly but I love to go to IKEA.

I am interested in alienation, when objects are stripped bare, and consequently present as strange, as no longer self-contained or with a unforeseen and deviant poetic (however, I don’t believe in objects without context). I believe that in the ways of dealing with things in our world, always lay remains of past dreams that cling reconnect. And that this is rather revealing of our society’s longings in the first place – informed by the capitalist system or not. I constantly wonder how we can relate to familiar things anew. My work is quite physical in that regard.
Considering the contemporary trend towards co-optation of visibility and identity by economic interests and the consequent exploitation of object-user relationships, I want to urge my practice to be attentive towards the identity-building functioning that is integral to objects of everyday life. In order to verbalise the function mechanisms that are relevant to my work, I invented and started to work on the term ‘xenobject’. Describing their ideological, economic and iconographic mechanisms, the term is aimed at objects that resist clear rationalisation; that possess a resilience to exploitation by power structures; and that have the resources to adopt a counter-position within their context whilst remaining part of it. Essentially, the xenobjects enable a re-evaluation of hegemonic object ideologies and I believe they come to exist exactly within the glitching of narratives, and hence populate before-mentioned narrative debris. The terminology also encompasses object-subject-relationships that build on association-based perception processes. Associations arise from and dart into personal memory. Employed by everybody themselves, the departure point of associative experiencing transcends the cultural history of the viewer and thus becomes an individual, personal and tender experience.

What was your first experience with art?

Can’t remember really.

What is your greatest source of inspiration?

This I find a difficult question. It sounds cheesy but I want to say it’s everyday life as we proceed or really just being alive for the good or the worse. I try to be as open as possible for situations that stem from our times and soak them up while trying to be aware of my own privileged position as much as I can. It’s like immersing myself into what society constantly fabricates, while trying not to know anything about what I already know and to then reflect on it by means of the things left behind in the process. Dexterity in the appropriation of everyday objects plays an important role in my work, too. I’m attracted to small things. Also, a certain sculptural seduction seems crucial to me, to establish a more compassionate relationship to what is already there. It’s a lot.

What do you need in order to create your work?

My studio as I work from quite an extensive material and object archive. It’s things that I pick up, that I find and collect, or that friends give to me, that I arrange, assemble. I recently got myself a big free-standing table so that I can walk around it and look at everything from all sides, which is great. The spatial conditions within which I work, have a great influence on my work. Everything would look totally different in another place, which is very exciting actually.

What work or artist has most recently surprised you?

Art itself doesn’t play such a major role for my practice, (it probably does) but I think I’m more interested in other things. Most art feels like is already processed. However, recent shows that stuck with me are “I Broke the House”, curated by gta exhibitions at ETH in Zurich on Beverly Buchanan; the exhibition curated by Luca Lo Pinto and Chiara Siravo at Croy Nielsen in Vienna, including work by Giuseppe Desiato, Gianna Surangkanjanajai and CORMIO; the show on protest architecture at the MAK, also in Vienna. Other than that, I obviously keep on returning to Sara Ahmed for views on things solid and not, the Feminist Killjoy Handbook is a must-read. And I re-read Reena Spaulings over the summer, still working out wanting or not wanting to be Reena…