Frisuerchen
Interested in hairs as very functional as well as strange material, Erik Steinbrecher presents with Frisuerchen 12 plates with photographic compositions of hairstyles – as worn by mannequins in cheap shop windows, sculptures made by the artist or as montages with tufts lying on fashion features from magazines.
The plates show basically hairs as an archaic material on the human body. But expose in the end a subversive eye on the world by offering associations of brutalization. The different “haircuts” collected by the artist have an amusing impact on the observer – not without concealing the beauty and grace of this peculiar material “hairs”. Just as the german title of the book (Frisuerchen) ironically alludes to, by meaning the diminutive of hairstyle.
Book :
29.7 x 42 cm, 12 loose pages with banderole, 12 color plates, softcover, english
kodoji press, baden, 2012, first edition,
ISBN 978–3–03747–027–5
Retail price: 25 euros.
Trouble mit der anima
Trouble mit der Anima consists of 34 photographs of dishes with mostly smiling, partially grimly looking faces made of leftovers, from the meal the artist just has eaten. Erik Steinbrecher took the photographs ambulant and on the quick with his iPhone, right before the waiter picked the plates for throwing the leftovers away.
Therewith the photographs contrast the dictum “don’t play with food” so as they freeze the instant, just before the artworks disappear. By playing with the food the artist animated the leftovers with their own lives. So we don’t stare anymore at banal relics of daily life, but subjects with their own anima, that stare back. Trouble mit der Anima is a selection out of tons of photographs. Presented in black and white with only two colored inserts, the photographs abstract the concrete motif of a smiling – or querulous – face even further and make them to self-reliant pictures.
Erik Steinbrecher was born 1963 in Basel, lives and works in Berlin. He has released numerous books and printed matter, which always expose a strong conceptual idea and function as independent artworks. (Frisuerchen) his third publication and Trouble mit der Anima is his fourth publication in the series of Kodoji Press artist books.
Book:
21 x 28 cm, 36 pages, 34 full-bleed color plates, softcover, english
kodoji press, baden, 2012, first edition
ISBN 978–3–03747–026–8
Retail price: 15 euros.
The books (Frisuerchen) and Trouble mit der Anima are published on the occasion oft he exhibition ANIMISMUS at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, that takes place until May 5th, 2012. The books are part of the exhibition.
Erik Steinbrecher was born 1963 in Basel, lives and works in Berlin. He has released numerous books and printed matter, which always expose a strong conceptual idea and function as independent artworks. (Frisuerchen) his third publication and Trouble mit der Anima is his fourth publication in the series of Kodoji Press artist books.
