Stretch Sculpture

Erik Steinbrecher

Intensities replace intentions; the quality of plasticity is mirrored by many-facetted emotions. For example in politics or pornography - a bundle of rod-type sculptures with melodious names like Anaconda, Larry, Pony, Luder, Afghan and Dong that the Berlin artist Erik Steinbrecher has growing out of the wall.

Larry, Anaconda 2004
resin, mixed media
94 x 6 x 105 cm, 280 x 9 x 500 cm
Courtesy Galerie Stampa Basel and Galerie Barbara Weiss Berlin
(Photo: Christian Wachter, Vienna)

The wordplay "politics or pornography" he used as a title for the presentation of objects in Vienna suggests the simultaneity of realities with adverse contents, the principle of a grotesque montage.

The individual objects resemble ones we know - from a truncheon to a missile and a phallus -, but they do remain hybrid in an off-colour way. They will not be incorporated; they are anti-authoritarian, unlawful, tactless - simply artistic in a headstrong manner. The humorous refusal is sceptical and radically anti-metaphysical; the sculptures are not expressions or metaphors, but analogies and patterns - gatherings that topple supposed certainties.

(Extract from the catalogue introduction by Marion Piffer Damiani)

Locke 2, Locke 1, Haken No. 4 2005 Larry 2004 resin
94 x 6 x 105 cm Galerie Stampa Basel (Photo: Serge Hasenböhler, Basel)