Cole Sternberg’s practice contemplates humanity’s existential quandary: the condition of being both hopelessly destructive and inevitably linked to nature. Across painting, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, film, and writing, his work positions human aspiration against the dominant and regenerative forces of the environment and the passage of time. Art, language, history, law, and collective identity emerge as fragile constructs—ephemeral systems that attempt to reflect, parallel, or challenge nature’s ascendancy, yet ultimately remain subject to it.
In recent years, Sternberg’s painting practice has increasingly centered on the environment as an active collaborator. Wind, water, sunlight, and other natural forces participate directly in the making of the work, allowing environmental processes to shape the final image. Poetry and fragmented texts occasionally appear within these works, suggesting narratives and descriptions that resist complete comprehension. His photographs interrupt time, while sculptural and film-based projects pursue and deconstruct historical and cultural myths.
Acts of erasure recur throughout Sternberg’s practice: the erasure of marks and words, the erasure of history, and the erasure of the natural environment itself. Rather than functioning solely as gestures of removal, these interventions expose the instability of the systems through which meaning is constructed. Through an ongoing search for truth, Sternberg’s work reflects on humanity’s persistent desire to create permanence while confronting the inevitability of transformation, entropy, and change.