JONATHAN BERGER

Berger’s acclaimed 2019—2020 project, An Introduction to Nameless Love, was hailed as one of the most significant contemporary exhibitions of recent years, blurring genres through merged multiple facets of the artist’s practice including experimental forms of research and non-fiction, oral history and biographical narrative, sculpture, installation, curatorial practice, and exhibition design.

As Carol Bove writing for ArtReview notes, ‘What Jonathan is doing is a totally different activity to that of a curator or even the-artist-as-curator, where an artist makes a show out of other people’s work and we read it as an allegory for his/her own practice’.

Background

Born in New York City in 1980, Berger received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2002 and his MFA from New York University in 2006. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art Professions at NYU and lives and works in both New York City and Glover, Vermont.

Key life experiences inform Berger’s work—most recently, his residency at MoMA explored personal and political histories rooted in his family’s experience during World War II, weaving together diasporic identity and collective memory.

Practice and Major Themes

Jonathan Berger’s work is rooted in the potential of exhibition-making, spanning sculpture, installation, performance, archival research, design, and education. He positions himself at the intersection of multiple roles, questioning and reworking the typical boundaries of artist, curator, producer, archivist, and historian. His projects frequently involve creating expansive collaborative works: sometimes producing objects himself, commissioning others, or sourcing and recontextualising found materials. Much of Berger’s work is shaped by exchange, dialogue, and the creation of meaning through collaboration.

His approach to the exhibition site is experimental—he reimagines these spaces by engaging with both recognised and overlooked art forms, juxtaposing conventional display with live events. Berger is especially known for activating artist archives and developing projects that bridge the divide between the familiar and the unknown, challenging assumptions about what constitutes art and exhibition. His exhibition, An Introduction to Nameless Love, for example, chronicled diverse, profound connections that transcend conventional romance—friendship, collaboration, mentorship, and kinship—rendered through monumental text-based sculptures.

Career Highlights and Key Exhibitions

• 2025: Believers: Artists and the Shakers (group exhibition), ICA Boston, 13 February–3 August 2025
• 2025: Studio Residency: Jonathan Berger, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2–24 August 2025
• 2022: Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet As It’s Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 6 April–5 September 2022
• 2020–2021: The Store, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, 1 December 2020–31 December 2021
• 2020: An Introduction to Nameless Love, Participant Inc., New York, 23 February–5 April 2020
• 2019: An Introduction to Nameless Love, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 17 October–29 December 2019
• 2014: Frieze Projects, Frieze London, 15–18 October 2014
• 2013: On Creating Reality, by Andy Kaufman, Maccarone, New York, 12 January–23 February 2013
• 2009: Stuart Sherman: Nothing Up My Sleeve (included in the PERFORMA Biennial), Participant Inc., New York

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Ocula | 2025