Exhibition from Erik Steinbrecher

Erik Steinbrecher from Basel is an artist and ETH-architect. He teaches Fine Arts as part of the Master of Arts programme at the «Hochschule der Künste» in Zurich. In addition to his works for public space, sculptures and photo installations, he is also known for his videos, prints and artist’s books. He has been building up a picture archive since he was a student, with a strong focus on images of an often fragmentary character, which he combines in distinctive arrangements. For some twenty years now, he has been publishing this visual material in numerous notebooks, brochures and books, as well as in the form of posters and placards. His foremost interest is not so much the formal composition of the printed materials. Nor does he seek to develop a personal signature. The posters, invitation cards and other printed materials by Martin Kippenberger, though copious, might be regarded as peripheral to his oeuvre, whereas printed works are very much at the centre of Erik Steinbrecher’s artistic output, in which a strong emphasis is placed on the sculptural quality of the objects portrayed. For instance, the product catalogue of a building supplier is transformed by Steinbrecher’s visual approach and rearrangement into a fascinating collection of strange structures – a sum of many parts that can be integrated into architecture.

The full scope of Erik Steinbrecher’s Books & Prints can now be seen in Switzerland for the first time, following their presentation in Berlin, and will be published in a book collated by artist and graphic designer Lex Trüb.

The exhibition will be accompanied by five publications/editions, including the above-mentioned:

Erik Steinbrecher, KONKRET
One colour offset, 360 pages/illustrations
Softback, thread-stitched
Design: Erik Steinbrecher and Lex Trüb
Publisher: bookhorse, Zürich 2014, www.bookhorse.ch
Price: 48 Francs, ISBN 978-3-9523391-6-9