Interview: Jonathan Crocca
Luca Curci talks with Jonathan Crocca during CONTEMPORARY VENICE 2024
Edition at Palazzo Albrizzi Capello, Venice

Jonathan is an artist, musician and Landscape Designer from the United States, currently living and
working in New York. His artistic background is rooted in hand drawing and illustration, as well as the
study of Piano and Guitar. Jonathan received his academic training as a classical guitarist from the State University of New York at Fredonia and graduated with a Bachelor of Music in 2009. After considering his career path and objectives, Jonathan decided to apply to the City College of New York’s Landscape Architecture program at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, graduating with a Masters’s degree in Landscape Architecture in 2016. It was during the course of his studies in New York, among the densely layered strata of urban typologies, that Jonathan became inspired to create the photographic series ABSTRACTION. The photographs have been collected throughout the city of New York and processed into abstract images since 2013. Jonathan continues to produce art while working as a Landscape Designer and construction management consultant for public parks and green infrastructure projects.

Luca Curci: Which subject are you working on?
Jonathan Crocca: The photographs are taken from torn and peeling advertising posters of New York City subway platforms. The advertising posters are pasted one on top of another and as the underlying layers are exposed through deterioration, the abstract compositions reveal themselves as a point in the process
of decay. The images are then digitally enhanced to articulate individual characteristics and distil a new, more vivid and unique visual statement. Drawing on the social context of advertising and the temporal nature of the cycle of the decay and renewal of the posters themselves, the series is meant to reflect somewhat, our relationship to our own social history. Groups of people, stratified by culture, class, race and experience, hold unto their specific communities, memories of a shared past. Some of these sets of memories overlap, some are obscured by others, while eventually they all will be at least partially replaced by the notions and ideas of a new generation. How will the collective memories of the past influence the composition of the future? ABSTRACTION seeks to visualize this concept and invites the viewer to parse the layers of color and texture and investigate their varied morphologies.

LC: How did you get to your current artistic practice?
JC: The subject of this photographic series was discovered in the same way as one might see objects
depicted in the clouds. Pareidolia is a phenomenon that describes our ability to observe an otherwise
random pattern and discern a meaningful image, in this case, abstract art.

LC: What do you think about art on social media? Are they turning into the new showcases of
contemporary art?
JC: I think that in a certain sense, yes, social media is a mechanism for creating greater access for the consumers of art as well as being a tool for artists to potentially achieve a greater reach in terms of audience. However, I feel that there are correlations to how the music and film industries have
changed in response to their integration with technology, for example, that mass distribution platforms have had a greater influence on what art is produced based on marketability, as opposed to the artist themselves being free to conceive inspired works and create organically. It is important to remember that art is a reflection of society and should be viewed as a means of introspection into the social consciousness. The influence of market forces does not necessarily override the qualitative value of these insights but does account for additional layers of information that then must be considered.

LC: What are the three hashtags essential to define your poetics that you could not give up?
JC: #Abstractart, #Phototgraphy, #Decor

LC: Where do you find your inspiration?
JC: I am inspired by artist like Joan Mitchel and Jackson Pollack but also graffiti art in general, natural
processes, cycles of environmental change, and creative phenomena like Pareidolia.

LC: What do you think about the concept of this exhibition? How did it inspire you?
JC: I am inspired by the connection between my work and the theme of the exhibition. Just as future
landscapes are those that do not exist outside the imagination, the images of my series ABSTRACTION
frame moments of information from a continuum of decay and replacement that implies both a past
and future state of the subject.

LC: Can you explain something about the artworks you have in our exhibition?
JC: The ABSTRACTION series illustrates the disconnect often found between people and the places and things that they create for themselves. Much of what we consume as individuals; media, landscapes, architecture, food, technology etc … is the culmination of a massive amount of information or energy or history, that may draw from innumerable sources, but then is perceived in a very compartmentalized way by each individual, each one experiencing a singular and unique response.

LC: What are your suggestions about our services? Is there something more we can provide to
artists?
JC: Art is defined only by the perception that something has been created, and represents an idea. The role of the art curator then, is to foster connection between people and ideas. In the same way that economic forces have the power to either stimulate or inhibit creative endeavours of all kinds, I would suggest that ITSLIQUID GROUP find more ways to insulate the creators of Art from the limiting effect that money has on the expression of ideas.

LC: What is your idea about ITSLIQUID GROUP?
JC: I would like to thank ITSLIQUID GROUP for enabling me to participate, I had a great experience.