JONATHAN EHRENBERG

HORIZON

SEPTEMBER 2021

There are no tracks on the island, or much else. I drag two poles behind me over my newly made footprints, plant one firmly in the sand, then unfurl the screen, make it taut, and plant the other pole.

Satisfied-ish, I walk back to my boat, passing the table with the projector on it. I click the generator on. It’s humming. I open the laptop. I press play. I adjust the projector so the horizon on the screen lines up with the island’s horizon. The sun is setting.

I climb back into my boat, settle in. On the screen are three heads watching the sunset. Nothing left to do but wait for the film to play a while, though waiting is very strange if you think about how long to keep doing it. It’s like the problem of how to measure time: You watch physical objects move through space, assign some sort of unit per movement. Count the units. Decide how many is enough.

But the movements of the heads are hard to quantify. They huddle together looking separately this way or that. Like me, they seem to be waiting and also unsure for what or how long. The sun in their sky is setting. The terra cotta head looks up, and the blue turns to look at the terra cotta. The mottled grey also turns to see if something is happening then back to the horizon, where his gaze lingers.

Though I am real and they are not, I feel myself falling in with them.  There’s something about a sunset that makes one watch it, a reminder, maybe, of where one is, and some felt link with the past and future.

Though I am real and they are not, it feels as if the heads and I are experiencing this together. I begin to notice things: My breath syncing with the sound of water lapping against the boat. The colors of my real sunset somehow always lining up with the sunset in the film—even with the occasional lag.

I notice myself stealing looks at the heads to see how they are reacting to their changing sky and whether they’ve spotted anything interesting. Taking my cues from blue and grey, I also look at terra cotta whenever he shifts his gaze, which he is doing less often as his fidgeting subsides into the rhythms of the waves and fading light. And we four go on waiting. 

- Maria Rapoport

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Jonathan Ehrenberg’s work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, SculptureCenter, The Drawing Center, Nicelle Beauchene, Essex Flowers (New York), Futura Center (Prague), The B3 Biennial (Frankfurt), Temnikova & Kasela (Tallinn), and Nara Roesler (São Paulo). He received a BA from Brown University, and an MFA from Yale, and residencies include LMCC, Harvestworks, Triangle, Skowhegan, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Glenfiddich in Scotland. He was born in New York, NY, where he currently lives and works.