Matthew Ronay's surreal sculptures exist at the boundaries of compression. His early work, bright and bold, cartoonish and lurid, suggested heady explanations and surreptitious cultural commentary. Several years ago, however, Ronay rejected this work, erasing any whiff of easy explanation or modern cynicism from his art, and arrived at a intuitive, mythological vision of sculpture. His newest exhibition, a vast "forest" installation of symbolic forms, will show at Andrea Rosen Gallery in June. 

In this conversation with Ronay, ARTINFO discusses the role of mysticism in his work, the significance of process and materials, and why the artist was disappointed in the drawings of Carl Jung. 

The term "shamanism" often surrounds your new work. What is your definition of a shaman?

I don't feel gifted enough to be shamanistic. The goal for me is intuition and imagination. In my personal life, I try to think with a foot in both worlds, though, and to me, that does seem like the definition of a shaman, someone with a foot in both worlds.

Both worlds?

Male, female. Life, death. Reality, unreality.

Dualities.

In that way, shamanism becomes a non-dual thing. But I'm not that character. It would be pretentious to say that I'm a shaman. But the goal is about getting far out and following intuitive threads. When I started reading Jung and Joseph Campbell, I started feeling that imagination could do something collective and real.

Not just navel gazing.

A lot of art is about art or cleverness or ego. Not that my art is pure; you can't get to pure. But shamanism is about delving into the mystery of things and seeing things from different angles. A shaman should do something amazing for society.

Who is that in contemporary society?

It should be the artists, but you need people to be willing to participate in the mysterious process. Historically, shamans aren't useful to society in a typical way. For instance, if you're crippled, you can't go hunting, so you sit around and watch the seasons and you create these cycles of thought and narratives to help people cope. They help people understand that it's okay for people to die, because someone is born. It's okay to kill because things re-grow. The keep it centered. But now, science has obliterated the need to work with the mystery. I do think artists should embrace the "weird" more, rather than trying to get a show or a gallery, or worrying about their career. I fall prey to these things, too, but if artists had more time, maybe they could bring some of the ideas, like, say, energy transference, which is something that belongs to the new age, into art.

What artists are doing that? Did Joseph Beuys?

He was definitely weird, and he wanted to help culture, and he has a unique place in history because of Germany's past. His society needed him. He seemed to be an outward person. I get really excited in the isolation of what I do. I enjoy my studio time and trying to make something earnest. I don't want to change, or expect to change politicians minds. I want my work to be generous for other people but I'm not seeing myself inserted into a greater social discourse like Beuys. Or at least that isn't the purpose of this work. I tried to change the world with my older work, and it was a huge disappointment.

Is that how it felt?

I have always been intuitive, but as we got further away from the surrealist moment, the whole intention of what it was got lost. Earlier work I made was connected to directly representational images, which made it more surreal. I believed that work meant something and it could affect the world and people's thought processes. In the end, though, I felt that the work was impractical, it needed to be digested over long periods of time. It was meant to be digested in a trippy, forensic way. You had to triangulate meaning. If you imagined there was another object that wasn't there, you could get an exit strategy for Iraq. I didn't want people to get what I got, but I thought people would put it all together. The moment that work was made in was such a political moment. We were at the end of western civilization, but no one talked about it that way. That work didn't get its due consideration in terms of potential ideas it brought up. Luckily, though, it led me to where I am now, and I'm not interested in trying to find the message anymore. The message is there no matter what; it's in our imaginations. I'm trying to get at more basic ideas. Right now I'm making these chandeliers, and they're about death and funerals and remembrance. They are just simple ideas, but they are central to who we are.

But you still enjoy your old work?

I do. That work wasn't so dissimilar from this work, I was just at a different place then. But in order to get to where I am now, I had to hate that work. Now I don't hate it.

Does the work you're doing now have more specific meaning or function for you?

I love the functional aspect of artwork, even if you are pretending that it has a function. If you want to make your work meaningful, make it useful. I think about this new work like cave painting. One idea about cave painting is that it was an initiation site. Young people are brought into the caves when it's time to take responsibility, when it is time to become self-sufficient. The paintings simulated real situations. They have to see what's frightening and magical and dark and confusing about the world. It's like Joseph Campbell's ideas about the forest, which is maybe a terranean version of the cave. Henri Rousseau, who I love, a was also interested in this forest as well, and how it contains both beauty and danger. This new installation I made is like that, it's a forest. The piece's function is, really, a kind of sanctum. It's not a specific function but a an open ended site. You go into it, get challenged, and come out on the other side the better for it, hopefully.

A more intuitive sense of function.

Intuition can be so much more complex than the triangulation kind of thinking.

What is the process of making this work?

The process is connected to marking time and transferring energy. A lot of it is pretend, but through pretend sometimes a new genuineness can be created. Literally though, the process can be repetitive and calming moments mixed with intuitive and improvisational moments. Compared to other times, making work is about fulfilling desires and enjoyment, not production.

What about your choice of materials?

I like this idea of materials as a relief from shame. If your artwork was dropping acid onto a canvas, the way the canvas looks is not because you made it look that way, it's because the materials did that, and in that way relieves you from making a potentially shameful aesthetic decision.

Or choice. Like Beuys's fat and felt.

I love the way Beuys used fat and felt but I'm not as connected to materials like that. I like to master materials. I haven't found materials to be informative for me. I like things being in their original state — cotton and wood — but to me the best use of materials would be to use them to relieve  the shame.

It would make the work about the fat.

I enjoy the fruition of labors. I like to use a material that I can manipulate and I guess I just haven't found meaningful materials that I can manipulate. Honestly, my materials are humble and cheap because I don't have any money. In that sense, they do mean something because they are cheap.

What about the cloaks you've made? Is there meaning or function in those?

When I started working on the cloaks, I thought about Birds of Paradise. They transform themselves to look bigger or sexier or more aggressive. Those cloaks are about the ego, about ego construction. That show was called "Is the Shadow." Jung talks a lot about the shadow. One of the ways to experience the collective unconscious is the shadow; the shadow is your hang-ups, the opposite of ego, the stuff that is there but you might not realize it. I was reading about that stuff when I made those cloaks. My insecurity makes me compensate and desire to be bigger, look stronger, less vulnerable. The cloaks play out some of those hang-ups. They are a kind of admission of inadequacy.

What about the performances in the videos?

Those activated the cloaks. It brought them into existence. They're not trying to bring forth rain or anything like that, but those performances were the first step toward making them real. It's imagination being made real. It's about the need for ritual in our life. The videos were all very spontaneous, though. The cloaks just did that to me.

You use the word activating a lot. You activated some of your old work with a stripper, right?

That was at Mark Foxx, yes. Someone told me once that activation is what you do to a credit card. I don't know about that. But I like that you can give the work an energy by being inside of it. Ideally, you are always living in the work. I mean, it wasn't happening in the past for no reason — these ceremonies and rituals with objects. It brings an energy to an inactive artifact.

So for the opening of the show in New York, you'll be inside the costume, activating it?

Yeah. I'll be standing inside it for three hours. It's like a sweat lodge.

I'm curious about your reading. You mention Joseph Campbell. What sort of reading has been informing your work?

I've been reading some Eric Hoffer. I like Jung. I like reading about the journey. I like Alan Watts and things I can apply to my own struggle to be engaged with how I'm treating myself and the world around me.

Have you looked at Jung's Red Book?

I have it. But, you know, I was disappointed by Jung's exhibition I saw at the Rubin — his paintings from the Red Book. I saw the Jung exhibit and then went upstairs and saw the Jainist tapestries and I felt embarrassed for him. And for me. We have a personal desire to create out of imagination but then, with real religions, the artifacts are just unmatchable.

And selfless.

Yeah. So selfless. And hundreds of years of experience and thought are embodied in this. It shouldn't destroy Jung's work or my work, but it's humbling to see these craftsmen emptying themselves into their work. Though I don't want to involve myself in an organized religion, you look at these tapestries and you see the size of these ideas, and nothing compares. But what I do like about Jung's Red Book is his work with active imagination. I really got the book because I wanted a little piece of that idea. It's why I was attracted to the book. It makes the art not about the end product. He wanted the grand unification of ideas through the unconscious; I love that.  Watts and Campbell both do that.

Right. They create a sort of secular, perennial religion by bringing all these ideas together.

That's what I respond to. All these religion have ideas in common. Why not try to bring all that into art?