Jonathan Skurnik is a filmmaker and visual artist living in Southern California. He began his career as a writer and literary magazine publisher, then moved into filmmaking and installation in his early 30s. Since then, Jonathan has produced, directed and shot six award-winning PBS documentaries that have played in hundreds of festivals around the world, and he has produced and directed more than thirty short documentaries, music videos, and narrative films.
Jonathan’s first fine art installation was a series of kinetic sculptures of luggage that he reconfigured as working appliances. The series was exhibited as an installation called “Luggage for the Discerning Refugee.” While each piece was both elegant and whimsical, the installation was designed as a mock showroom from a 1930s East European capital, where savvy refugees from the Nazis could flee with both their belongings and their modern appliances at once. Video: vimeo.com/100950191
Jonathan’s most recent installation, Culture Lab:Oil, was a collaborative reconfiguration of the ancient temple in Jeruselem. In the first room, participants exchanged hand-made coins for a variety of small objects used to interact with various elements of the show which consisted of: a 35 foot glass canal of olive oil carrying small lit wicks in its slow current along the side of installation’s three rooms; two wall–sized, interactive closed-circuit videos of tanks filled with colored oil which participants activated into brilliant abstract forms by pouring various “reactives” into the tanks; a dispensary of 19 elegant glass vessels filled with colored vegetable oils, each one labeled as a spiritual quality which participants could dispense into a small corked vial and take home; and a final room lit only by the arriving wicks, which flowed into a large copper basin around which participants could sit in silence and contemplation. Video: vimeo.com/95159525
In the service of his artistic vision, Jonathan uses a wide variety of mediums, including ceramics, painting, print-making, video installation, writing, found objects and mixed media. He has exhibited and sold his visual art and videos in galleries in New York City, Martha’s Vineyard and Los Angeles.
