Professional Portfolio

Monroe Isenberg is an interdisciplinary artist known for his sculptures, installations, and time-based media works. His approach broadly explores human-earth connections and blurs the edges of time, space, and material. Isenberg holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Arts from the University of Maryland and is currently based in Los Angeles. He serves as an Assistant Professor and Area Head of Sculpture at Orange Coast College.

The following portfolio features twenty selected works organized by their medium:

1. Performance | video | time-based media
2. Installation | sculpture investigating light, space & other material elements
3. Drawing | mark-making

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Performance | Video | Time-based media

01. Harbinger
Site specific performance, installation, and video
Performance: 30mins
Video: 6m 47s
2024

Antelope Valley Desert, USA
Presented as part of PST ART: Art and Science Collide
PST ART is presented by Getty
Museum of Art History Public Art Foundation
Los Angeles County arts and Culture Fund

In Monroe Isenberg’s short film, performance and sculpture— Harbinger, three mirrored Joshua tree entities roam the desert in search of a new home. These alien yet familiar forms reflect sky, land, and light, moving with playful and unique personalities. With musical composition by Elori Saxl, the film reveals an uncanny twilight realm where imagination and reality interweave. This work invites viewers to foster a deeper appreciation for the iconic Joshua tree and desert ecology while referencing migration already underway due to climate change and development.

02. Landkeeper
Performance Duration 3.5 hours
Video: 5m 30s
Material: Fisherman suit, push broom made from
gathered grass, driftwood, and a pine branch
2022

Ullahomen, Skuløya, Norway
Temporal Horizons: Between the Sky and Sea
Supported by Longva AIR,
Performance Art Bergen,
Arts Council Norway,
Nordic Culture Fund,
Ålesund Municipality,
Møre go Romsdal County

Landkeeper is an exercise in myth making and stems from questions like — How can we create new myths that serve as guides and lessons for generations to come? How are myths and the environment entangled? And how can new mythologies provide value systems and moral guidelines and develop cultural responsibilities that address the challenges we face today?

As a response to these questions, Landkeeper is a story of protection, maintenance, and explores sentiments of futility. It investigates the idea of the mythic landscape— asking how our interactions with land can connect us to and permeate a place and its material.

03. A Different Arch
projection of water, time
variable dimensions
2022

Bergen, Norway

A Different Arch is a 13-channel video of the sunset reflecting off the ocean in Bergen, Norway. Each section or ring (thirteen total) is a video of a different section of time— the outer sections are recorded earlier and the inner sections are recorded later. Overlaying these sections produces a portal-like moving image where color and time intertwine and the whole sunset can be experienced all at once. No colors were altered or manipulated during the production of the work.

04. Earthwomb
2-channel projection on loop
30 minute performance,
“I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” by the Ink Spots
2019

Seydisfjordur, Iceland

Earthwomb considers how we can create meaningful interactions with land and sow deeper relationships with the Earth. Can engagement with the ground generate and renew severed connections?

The two-channel video and performance, Earthworb explores these questions. Played to the ghostly lullaby of “I Dont Want to Set the World on Fire” by the Ink Spots, the work references a child in a womb and weaves this intimate relationship into the surrounding fjord. The work explores the ground’s ability to heal, protect, and sustain, while exposing our fragile and vulnerable interdependence with Earth.

05. Sisyphus Wears a Tie
Performance Duration 8 hours
Video: 21m 07s
Material: Iced brackish water from the Delaware Bay,
button-up collar shirt, tie, music by Patsy Kline
2020

Philadelphia, USA

Brackish water collected from the estuary of the Delaware River was frozen into a 400 pound block of ice and transported upstream to Pennypack Park. Complicit and passive, a “pencil pusher” dressed in a button up shirt and tie, pushes the block of ice to expedite its melting. Reaching his physical and emotional limit, he knows not why he works, but relentlessly continues through the torment anyways. 

Rooted in the absurdity and meaninglessness of the labor involved, Sisyphus Wears a Tie is a durational exercise in drudgery, futility, and complicity. It explores the myth of progress and questions American pride in a total work culture. What results from this relentlessness?

Installation | Sculpture investigating light, space & other material elements

Metaphorical Honey is made from reconstituted clay and mud collected from the surrounding fjord and land. The material was embedded in the floor of a decommissioned net factory in east Iceland. As the material dries, ages and cracks, a line of light begins to shine from the work’s center. Revealing a secret, inner space, this site-specific installation invites exploration of this transformation.

07. Stone
Anacostia river stone, light, white room
72″ X 120″ X 96″
2018

Tephra ICA, USA

This 120 lbs stone collected from the Anacostia River, emits a line of light that interacts with the surrounding architecture and activates a previously undefined space. Revealing a type of secret world, the installation creates a room to participate in stillness and contemplate the subtle interaction between light, stone, and space.

08. Ayn
Cast fiberglass, strontium aluminate
Casts of 1500 and 500 LBS boulders
2019

Galerie Blue Square, USA

A site-specific work that responds to this historic forested area in the Virginia.

Boulders found on site were chosen for their unique properties and cast on site. Placed inconspicuously throughout the forest, the works appear as semi-translucent quartz material—almost ghostly. When day turns to night, the sculptures begin to glow naturally, revealing their inner life. The work invites questions that reconsider what we typically think of as being alive.

09. Stone Watch
Pigmented minerals
8″ X 36″ X 15″
2019

Serydisfjordur, Iceland

Referencing Olafur Eliasson’s Ice Watch, Stone Watch is a project and an ongoing body of work that explores deep time, erosion, and the intersections of scientific process and art-making. Rocks were carefully selected in Iceland for their unique pigmentations and compositions. Through collecting and grinding mineral samples, the work seeks to develop deeper understandings of these materials and presents their transformations.

10. Remember Being Stone?
Anacostia River stone, steel, “Cool Water,” by Marty Robbins
60” x 80” x 18”
2018 

Washington DC, USA

Using sound, stone, and steel, Remember Being Stone? is a playful sound sculpture. As the viewer approaches the large listening tube projecting from the center of the stone, the song “Cool Water” can be heard gently emanating from the works interior. The song featured in Marty Robbin’s wild west album “Gunfighter Ballots and Trail Songs” mythologizes pioneers and colonial thought frameworks. The combination of song and material invites viewers to consider their linkages.

11. nowhere is here
Solo Exhibition
mixed media
2021-2023


Works include—

Nonolith, Skyline
Flatspace, Aggregate
Horizon Disc 1
A Different Arch
Blue Shadow
Green Shadow
nowhere is here (book)
Landkeeper (performance Video)

Los Angeles, USA

“Luminescence. Grains of sands. Relics of unknown origins and impossible futures. Monroe Isenberg transmutes mundane, human-crafted elements into reflections on the dance of time, the expanse of space, and the untamed essence of the natural realm. These sculptures ascend as monoliths, foreign yet intimately familiar. Through the alchemy of fusing, sanding, and even video projection-intricate connections are woven, resonating with the mystique of Nordic isles and the ever-shifting tapestry of environments in flux. Nowhere is truly here.

Within the exhibition, sculptures, videos, and books coalesce, marrying the realms of fiction and the organic. The Nonolith, a monolithic opus, finds inspiration in Stanley Kubrick’s film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Its sleek, reflective countenance beams as if transported from a temporal future. In stark contrast, other creations anchor themselves firmly in the ephemeral present. Witness the 13-channel visual symphony titled A Different Arch, an homage to the sun’s descent on the shores of Bergen, Norway. The scene, serene and seemingly from another realm, extends an invitation that both captivates and soothes the beholder. nowhere is here unfolds as a contemplative ode to the natural world entwined with industrial artifacts. The exhibit is a moment both here and anywhere. Liminal and truly possible.”

—Dakota Noot, Curator at Doyle Arts Pavilion

12. Nonolith
acrylic, refracted light
96″ x 22″ x 22″
2023

Los Angeles, USA

Referencing Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey, Nonolith explores light’s relativistic qualities and was created to function as a relic from a future not yet in focus. Viewers experience the internal colors change and respond to their movement. This effect occurs completely naturally.

13. Skyline
cinderblock, plexiglass, refracted light
52″ x 18″ x 4″
2023

Los Angeles, USA

A tower of cinder supports a container emanating a spectrum of colors— a relationship between the physical and intangible unfolds. The cinderblocks allude to the built environment— the present, while the container references the sky and future. Their meeting point becomes a type of horizon.

14. Flatspace
acrylic, safety mirror
42″ x 58″ x 4″
2023

Los Angeles, USA

An obscured industrial remnant sits within a nondescript space a top two Pliocene sandstone rocks. Its weightlessness contrasts its placement on the ground. Appearing circular from the front, viewers discover the work is actually flat and disappears altogether from the side.

15. Aggregate
Pliocene sandstone, plastic, sand
10″ x 96″ x 12″
2023

Los Angeles, USA

Out of sand and sandstone emerge processed and raw plastic material. A subtle glow emanates from within them. The sand outlines the shape of a coffin, shadow, or ray of light. Will these synthetic aggregates mysteriously surface from within eroding lands in the distant future?

16. The Blue of Distance
mixed media
23″ x 22″ x 7″
2021

New York, USA

This convex wall hanging sculpture diffuses the light and color it contains. As the viewer engages the work, the blues evolve and change. To produce the work’s color, the sunrise in Iceland was documented for three hours. Various blue tints were then carefully selected from the video and reproduced as hand-mixed pigment. The video referenced is Blue Sunrise.

17. nowhere is here (6)
handmade accordion fold sculpture and book
8″ x 8″ x 480″
2023

Los Angeles, USA

nowhere is here is a handmade accordion fold sculpture and book that was developed in conversation with Ed Roucha’s All the Buildings on the Sunset Strip. Sixty photographs were taken of the ocean in Skuløya, Norway over an hour. Each page is one photo taken every minute in that hour. Every page appears different and the water’s subtle color changes become a marker of time.

18. M-emet
Shenandoah river water, steel, time
40″ x 34″ x 72″
2019

Washington DC, USA

M-emet is a water feature and sculpture. The word emet is a Hebrew word that comprises of three Hebrew letters: Aleph, Mem, and Tav. In Jewish teaching, Aleph symbolizes the past, Mem symbolizes the present and is associated with pregnancy and water, and Tav symbolizes the future. Together— aleph, mem, and tav spell emet which means truth.

Drawing | Mark-making

19. Sefer (1 of 5)
Cast washi paper on concave surface and archival ink
70″ x 70″ x 4″
2020-2022

Delaware Contemporary Museum, USA

Sefer is the Hebrew word for book with roots in the word sifriyah or library.

Through cyclic repetition, the drawing emerges. An accidental shake compounds over time into waves that undulate throughout the paper. By embracing mistakes, the mark grows in unpredictable ways. I relinquish control and become a vessel through which the drawing flows.

20. Dune Drawings
Material: Duralar, pastel, charcoal, American Beachgrass, time
Variable Dimensions
2022-23

Public Art Project
Delaware State Parks | Puffin Foundation
Past Present Projects
Curator: Zindzi Harley
Location: Cape Henlopen State Park, USA

The dunes of Cape Henlopen are a living landscape. Covered in coastal plants and grasses, these ever-shifting sand dunes create and sustain life. The species that builds and shapes the dunes is called American Beach Grass. Each beach grass plant extends roots and shoots called rhizomes that interconnect underground. The grasses depend on wind and sand to supply nutrients and stimulate rhizome growth, which strengthens the dunes. It is this collaborative and creative system of grasses, wind, and sand that inspired the series of artworks.”

—Heather Moqtaderi