Andrzej Steinbach - Hier

Huis Marseille will be introducing the Netherlands to the work of Andrzej Steinbach. Early on in his career Steinbach developed his own visual language, with meticulously planned compositions and almost Spartan settings. The exhibition title Hier (Here) can be read as an invitation: his works are gestures of showing. Their austerity helps to isolate patterns, whether these concern small details or larger social structures, and creates space to consider the mechanisms behind the act of looking. Steinbach treats seeing itself as an aesthetic problem. Rather than resolving it, his art gives the problem a form that can be admired, so that it can be attended to elsewhere.
Figures
Andrzej Steinbach constructs his images like a director: ‘there has to be a scratch on the surface here’ and ‘your hand has to be here’. His models follow his instructions closely, bringing subtle variations in gesture, posture, or outfit. Their invariably neutral expressions offer no insight into their personalities. Steinbach simply calls them ‘figures’. He uses these figures, the backgrounds, and the compositions to form typologically structured series that aesthetically explore the process by which we attribute meaning, roles and types to what we see, even when much information is withheld.
Society begins with three
The series Gesellschaft beginnt mit drei (2017) examines role assignments amongst people. Three figures perform a choreography of changing poses, formations and clothing, making their group dynamic subject to constant change. Its title refers to the argument that an interplay of forces among three elements underlies most structures, including, ultimately, society itself. In almost every photo in Gesellschaft beginnt mit drei, only three eyes can be seen: one of the faces has been cut in half. Together, the images blend to form a group portrait full of inconsistencies.