Charly Steiger
Charly Steiger (* 1958 in Darmstadt ) is a German media artist and author.
From 1978 to 1985 she studied fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Mainz . She has lived and worked in Frankfurt am Main since 1987.
In addition to her visual and artistic projects with moving light (projections and video films), she also worked in the field of electronic music, as an author, curator and teaching in higher education.
life and work
Music and graphics
During her art studies, Steiger founded the art association SELEKTION eV with fellow students, musicians and friends in 1984.She was involved in (music) publications by the affiliated independent label SELEKTION GdbR (SLP, Compromize) as well as in publications by other labels such as RRRecords (Bruitiste) . Together with Joachim Pense, Stefan Schmidt, Ralf Wehowsky ( P16.D4 ) and Roger Schönauer, she developed the live project SLP, which u. a. at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, the Ars Electronica Linz and during the 14th Leipzig Jazz Days .
She designed the visual implementation of various book publications (Terrorized Term), posters (Wintermusik, ZKM Karlsruhe ), record covers (NNNN and others), catalogs (Who am I) and the booklet for the CD release SLP.
She also worked for other independent labels or musicians in the fields of musique concrète , new music and noise ( Bernhard Günter , SBOTHI, RLW, Merzbow , Minoru Sato, etc.).
For SELEKTION and Staalplaat, Charly Steiger developed a new, foldable CD packaging made of cardboard (instead of the usual jewel cases ) , similar to vinyl record covers , which made it possible to add longer texts or more pictures.
Her work has received several awards (including “Best Promotional and Retail Packaging”, 1994).
From 1991 to 1995 she designed the appearance of the monthly literary magazine LISTEN.
Art or light installations
At the beginning of the 1990s, the focus of work changed in my own work as a visual artist. She realized numerous room installations , always designed and implemented for the respective location and the respective situation, u. a. in Frankfurt, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Perth and Valencia.
Her preferred medium of artistic expression is animated light, which is brought into rooms and situations via special projection devices.
Since the mid-1990s, individual video works have been produced sporadically, most recently in 2015. Video images are also Charly Steiger's preferred means in stage design.
In 2011 and 2014 the stage sets for Patricia Leinhos' performances "… your charming smile" and "white" were created. Chary Steiger, together with Patricia Leinhos and Jan Deck, was also responsible for the conception and the dramaturgy of the play "white".
Selection of artistic works
Small Times
In 1992, Charly Steiger staged a room as a display of himself for the first time. The work could also be seen at night and from outside the building - the rhythmic gliding past of minimalist light fields corresponded to the movements in the social space of passers-by on their way to and from work or that of the night owls of the urban lifestyle.
echo
In 1994 she shaded the large window surfaces of an exhibition hall in ECHO. 4 simple graphic forms in a dark, almost violet blue were projected onto the walls and slowly dimmed up and down, so that the light fields were often on the verge of perception. For the casual visitor, the hall sometimes appeared empty. It was only after a long period of time that it was possible to record the entire work.
Perforation
In 1999 Jan Hoet curated the exhibition "Epifanie" in the Abdij van't Park in Leuven (Belgium). For this exhibition, Steiger developed the work PERFORATIE, which transformed the building of an old coach house into a theater without a performance and thus transformed the place from a depot of marginalia into an actor that determines the surroundings for the walkers in the park.
Aria
In 2003, in an opening exhibition also curated by Jan Hoet, the outdoor work ARIA was created for the Museum Schloss Dyck , which for 3 years used the courtyard and the palace's spacious portal. Numerous additions and modifications to the original castle wing have put the inner courtyard in a tight spatial corset - Charly Steiger's work projectively gave the inner courtyard the space and air that the portal was once designed with.
The Dijle Project / By the Way
A larger project in public space came into being in Mechelen ( Belgium ) in 2006 on the occasion of the city's 2500th anniversary. Here Steiger was able to implement her design from an international invitation competition.
Her installation THE DIJLE PROJECT stretched over 1.5 kilometers from a score - like alternating dimmed beams of light crossing over the water along the inner-city course of the Dijle river - commentary on and accompaniment of passers-by on the riverside paths, streets and bridges. As part of this project, a neon drawing was also created over a bridge that provides access to the Theater t'Arsenaal, which is located directly on the Dijle .
In the same year the overview exhibition BY THE WAY took place at the Cultuurcentrum Mechelen with a revision of some of her early installations.
sheer, reflected
In 2014, Steiger installed a work that was poetic and light as well as precise and expansive in the church, which has been used as an art and cultural space for several years. "Sheer, reflected" consists of 30 LED lights, the appearance of which comes close to that of traditional fluorescent tubes - a common light source of the 1950s - and thus opened up the temporal context of the work up to the period in which the church itself was built. Changes in brightness of the individual lights are organized in patterns - in recognizable as well as in hardly decodable sections - and thus formed the counterpart to the changing quality of the daylight falling through the window and dome. The distances between the individual fluorescent tubes were organized against the visual foreshortening. The rows crossed the nave offset to the central axis and thematized the only partially symmetrical structure of the building. When walking through the room, visitors opened up different lines of sight from which the room could be experienced anew. After the work was dismantled, the LED lights were reused for a permanent light installation on the bell tower in 2015.
scales
After "sheer, reflected", the permanent work "skalen" was created with the material used there on the steeple of the All Saints Church in Frankfurt. In patterns and apparently random circuits, red LEDs illuminate the inside and the partially open construction of the bell tower. From the invitation: "When art adopts these markers (the church towers), what can also be foreseen in the skyscrapers artfully set in scene with light: Suddenly affected with a seemingly remote meaning, this other reinforces the original, confirms it and questions it at the same time. For the viewer, this opens up a space for interpretation and self-assessment. "
Stylistic classification
In terms of content, Steiger's work is characterized by an approach that questions the situational conditions and thinks of space not only as an architectural, but also as a social and cognitive category. She uses a minimalist, reduced design language that, especially in larger projects, often reaches an ephemeral quality.
Her work is characterized by an unobtrusive presence, the precision of the interventions and reinterpretations, as well as a reductionist choice of forms; they form a clear film for active appropriation by the viewer.
The viewer is always included in his various roles as part of the installations he visits: interactively controlling as in FLOW (Ars Electronica, Linz) and KINO (Galerie Hoffmann, Friedberg) or as a screen and reflection element as in SCOPE (Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden), as a steady cam like in IMPROMPTU (Kawasaki City Museum, Kawasaki) or as an explorer like in TOPOGRAPHIES (Perth, Western Australia).
The media works, which are often only installed for a short time, will be dismantled after the exhibition has ended, but there are also some permanent works in administrative buildings, commercial buildings and museums, and a few video films can occasionally be seen in various installations.
Curatorial work
Steiger gained her first curatorial experience when she designed and supervised the LISTEN exhibition in 1992 in the Portikus exhibition hall , Frankfurt am Main (under the direction of the then Städel director Kasper König ) (with artists such as Thomas Bayrle and Tamara Grcic, among others ).
From 1989 to 1999 she headed the SEQUENZ exhibition space (Frankfurt am Main), in which she presented advanced approaches in current art production, combined them into thematic series and presented them as solo exhibitions. Participating artists were u. a. Alba D'Urbano, Laura Padgett, Joanna Jones and Heide Weidele.
Teaching activities
In the 1990s she received more and more teaching positions at various universities and technical colleges (including Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck, Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, Curtin University Perth, University of Karlsruhe and Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg); In 2003 and 2004 she was professor in the Intermedia class at the Academy / HGB Leipzig .
Work publications
As part of SELEKTION, two catalogs of works were published in 1996 and 1999 as well as a video and a CD publication, in 1994 and 2001, showing the artist's work.
Scholarships
1995 - Working grant from the State of Hesse (Ministry for Science and Art)
1996 Curtin University Perth, WA Artist-in-Residence Scholarship
2014 - Merck scholarship for young literature / Darmstädter Textwerkstatt
Authorship
For some years now, Charly Steiger has also published shorter literary texts (also under pseudonyms) in various media (magazines and internet portals).
Web links
- selection
- Charly Steiger's homepage literature
- Charly Steiger's homepage visual arts
- Charly Steiger at Discogs (English)
- Kawasaki City Museum
Catalogs
- "Licht / light 1" selection, Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-00-001111-0
- "Licht / light 2" selection, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-934801-00-5
literature
- Alba d'Urbano / Tina Bara (HG): “A question about the gesture” Edition Fotohof, Salzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-901756-91-7
- Jan Hoet (HG): "Grazie" Foundation Schloss Dyck, Jüchen 2003
- Rolf Quaghebeure, Dirk Verbiest (HG): "Actuele kunst en religie - epifanie", Halewijn n. V., Leuven, 2000, ISBN 90-73503-33-7
- “Seeing while walking - art in Allianz Versicherungs-AG, Berlin”, Edition Hoffmann, Friedberg 1999, ISBN 3-926026-12-X
- Karl Gerbel / Peter Weibel (HG): "Ars Electronica 94, Intelligente Ambiente / Intelligent Environment Vol II", PVS Verleger Vienna, 1994, ISBN 3-901196-137
- Ken Pfeifer (HG): "Compact Disc - Packaging and Graphics - The best promotional and retail packaging", Gingko Press Verlags GMBH, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-927258-09-1
- "Kunstforum International", Vol. 116, 1991, Vol. 150, 2000, Vol. 172, 2006, Ruppichteroth, ISSN 0177-3674
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Steiger, Charly |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German media artist and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1958 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Darmstadt |