CHARLIE STEINPORTFOLIO

SELECTED WORKS 2010 – 2015

CHARLIE STEINPORTFOLIO

SELECTED WORKS 2010 – 2015

MODERN MING VASE | SHANGHAI IPainted and glazed porcelain | 54 x 77 cm2013

01

CHINA TAKE AWAY PROJECT60 Take-Away-Boxes (ink and gouache on bamboo fibre)60 interviews, conducted in Beijing and Shanghai2013 / 2014

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The CHINA TAKE AWAY project started in 2013 in Shanghai. Until this day there have been over 80 interviews conducted with Chinese people from all ranges of age and diverse different social and economical backgrounds. Those interviews form the per-formative bases for the project.

Food playing a very important role in Chinese everyday culture and society is one as-pect of the performance. The artist meets her interview partners for lunch or dinner, in a private or formal setting, where they are eating from the most common form of food containers used in Chinese urban and migrant society : The Take-Away box. While inquiring and learning about the individuals‘ thoughts, ideas and their perception of the world Stein and her interview partners eat from these lunch boxes - a rather ordi-nary and common act. At the end of each conversation the interviewee signs his/her box with a red marker, resembling the stamp colour of traditional Chinese stamps but also referring to Chinese superstition where writing ones name in red refers to the endlessness of life.

From what the artist learns during the conversation, she creates a distinct pattern that retells and reflects the conversation. These designs are inspired by the pattern common for Ming dynasty porcelain painting. The contrast between the cheap paper and the exquisite Ming dynasty patterns - originally only found on precious porcelain vases and plates - reflects on the drastic change of China‘s culture within the last decades. The act of painting the boxes with a personal design is the attempt to sub-jectively capture the thoughts and aspects of each conversation and transform them into a semantic of patterns and images.

Elevating this throw-away item of no particular value into the context of one of the world‘s most precious materials comments on the value of each individual story in a society so well known for its collective mind-set.

CALL OF THE WILD - THE NOBLE SAVAGEShort film | 6:20 min.2014

03 NARCISSISM - TOUT S‘EFFACEShort film | 4:33 min.2013

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Narcissim shows the ordinary routine of a woman applying make-up, a simple, common gesture. However the finishing touch – the application of red lipstick – con-stantly fails - by simply missing the intended location for less than an inch riddicules the serious attempt of beautification. At the same time the video tackles the subject of the gaze; The young woman constantly watches herself in an imagined mirror – which directs her gaze directly at the audience - while she is performing her intimate routine. The image of the sad clown – a constant in art history creates a bridge between the genre of video to the visual world of painting.

The short film Call of the Wild deals with the opposition between the wilderness and urbanity, focussing on the issues of consumerism and the idividual, human identi-ty, vulnerability and the idea of the Noble Savage. With its beautifully constructed frames and over-aestheticized imagery Call of the Wild also follows a distinct visual aesthetic that recalls the history of landscape painting. Call of the Wild is intended to have multiple layers of meaning creating immediate affect, identification and at the same time conveying a Kafkaesque feeling of discomfort.

MINIMUM WAGE (MINDESTLOHN)Print | Aldi receipt on thermo-paper2012

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A receit from a discount supermarket, reading „Mindestlohn“ from top down, which had been manufactured through the manual labour of a cashier. „Mindestlohn“ reflects on the status quo of precarious employment situations of the underpaid, underinsured and mainly female employees of these discount supermarkets.

SAFE PLAYGROUND Installation | Metal, white paint, wood, plastic, concrete2012

06

WINDOWSPainting | Oil on canvas, 80 x 120 cm2010

SELF-PORTRAIT IN FRONT OF THE NSA HEADQUARTERS EUROPE IN STUTTGART VAIHINGEN Painting | Oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm2014

07 08

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS I-VI Painting | Acryl on wood, 100 x 200 cm2012

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TALENT BORROWS GENIUS STEALS Curated Pop Up Show in 10 Discount Supermarkets | 300 Print-Outs of Original Ideas for Artworks by 30 artists

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TALENT BORROWS GENIUS STEALS is a group exhibition curated by and with Charlie Stein, exposing over 30 instructions for art works by 30 globally known and active ar-tists such as Christian Jankowski, Liz Magic Laser, Birgit Brenner, Tjorg Douglas Beer, Lori Hersberger, Olaf Breuning and Costa Vece. The show was installed overnight in the public sphere in 10 discount supermarkets, displaying 300 unique ideas for art works designed specifically for this show.

The selected artists only contributed an outline for a future art piece they would like to see created. The act of giving away something for free that is as precious as the plan for an original art piece can be seen as a statement against the fear of plagia-rism. This gesture hints that really prolific and strong artistic minds do not share the fear that someone will steal their ideas, since they trust their own capability and authenticity when it comes to putting ideas into practice. These ideas are printed on paper in the shape of the inserts that go inside the handles of shopping carts, making them available in the public domain during the high season of shopping and consumerism - the last three days before Christmas holiday. By that anyone shop-ping in one of the targeted supermarkets is offered a kind of guide for the creation of an art piece.

The concept for the exhibition relates to the recurring debate on originality, plagia-rism and disputable authorship within the art world. The logical, perhaps somewhat radical conclusion to this seems to be taking it even one step further by making unique artistic ideas accessible to anyone, so they can freely chose to consume or ignore the potential within those ideas.

www.talentborrowsgeniussteals.blogspot.com

2009 – 2014 Postgraduate Studies Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart

Class of Christian Jankowski, Class of Rainer Ganahl

2013 Scholarship of the State of Baden-Württemberg in

Shanghai, China

2010 DAAD Scholarship , Beijing, China

2007 – 2010 Studies in Painting / Media Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich

Class of Gerhard Merz, Class of Klaus vom Bruch

Born in Germany, 1986

CV

EXHIBITION LIST

2015 Athina Art Fair | Athens, Greece

2015 Artrusk Gallery | Group Show, Geneva, Switzerland

2014 Talent Borrows Genius Steals | Pop Up Show in 10 Discount Supermarkets,

Stuttgart, Germany

2014 CI 90 Minute Shows | Contemporary Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey

2014 FILMZ – Festival des deutschen Kinos | Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany

2014 Continental Drift | Songjiang Art Museum, Shanghai, China

2014 Clair Obscur Filmfestival | Basel, Switzerland

2014 Urban Shades | Design Museum Holon, Holon, Israel (curated by Hadas Zucker)

2014 Tansmembran: Social Bodies And Their Framing | Kunstverein Feuerbach,

Stuttgart, Germany

2014 Call of the Wild | Galleria Fuori Orbita, Locarno, Switzerland

2014 Endlossschleife 2014 / 2041 | Württembergischer Kunstverein,

Stuttgart, Germany

2014 UCLA: Untitled Art Cafe | UCLA Broad Arts Center, Los Angeles, USA

2014 Just Episoden | Calwer Passage, Stuttgart, Germany

2013 Im Glashaus (Curator) | Galerie Jeseits Von Jedem, Suttgart, Germany

2013 No Place To Hide | Stuttgart, Germany (curated by Felix Ensslin and Ulf Aminde)

2012 Clair Obscur Filmfestival | Basel, Switzerland

2012 First World Problems | Stuttgart, Germany

2012 Show Me Yours, I Show You Mine | Wilhelmspalais, Stuttgart, Germany

2010 Schluesselangst | BBK Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany

2010 Klett-Passage | Stuttgart, Germany

2010 Multi Level Analysis | Internationalgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany

2008 Mythos 68 (Award from the Heinrich Boell Stiftung) | Warszwa, Poland

German conceptual artist Charlie Stein graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart where she studied at Professor Christian Jankowski. Prior to this she received a classical education in painting at Professor Gerhard Merz at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She also holds a master‘s degree in political science from the department of social sciences and a degree in English literature and linguistics from the University of Stuttgart. In her work she focuses on the perception of cultural identities and their implications in a globalised, interconnected world which she then translates into installations and projects that contain both a tangible quality and a distinct visual notion. She works with different media, comprising installations, painting, sculpting , video and performance.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Andreas Ströbel

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Nadine Bracht | MODERN MING VASE, CHINA TAKE AWAY PROJECT

Martin Stollberg | SELF-PORTRAIT IN FRONT OF THE NSA HEADQUARTERS

Achim Zweygarth | CHINA TAKE AWAY PROJECT

BIOGRAPHY

WWW.CHARLIESTEIN.COM