The work’s ultimate goal is to increase the capacity for empathy within the viewer. In order to do so, the work must illuminate certain aspects of the human experience that are consistent to all people. These aspects that form the emotional center of the work are uncertainty, vulnerability, and isolation. The darkness and pain associated with these aspects of the human experience can be difficult to recognize and should not be introduced to the viewer in a blunt manner. These emotions must be addressed through a circuitous series of aesthetic and conceptual facades. These facades are formed by employing the mechanisms of beauty, humor, and decadent surfaces that attract and focus the viewer’s attention and then serve as conduits to the darker emotional truths at the core of the work. Producing art that makes one confront the negative aspects of the human experience may seem at first a bleak task but it is done in the name of empowerment. The only way we can overcome these difficult elements of the human experience is to know them, embrace them, and connect with others through them.
- Anthony Sonnenberg