Art always bears the risk of succumbing in times of conflict. Art is that very part of the immortal that is not safe from destruction. The debt we carry as those who take from the past, we must endeavor to repay as those who give to the future. The repression of violence creates a totalitarian potential, charged with dissatisfaction and rage, a perpetual declaration of war against those reactionary developments that can drive a society into fascism.

In this context, the sculptures of Stephanie Stein gain their existential depth. It's not about illustrating destruction, but to make its substance experiential through form. The objects function as ostensibly functional remains of an architecture of threat…

…In terms of both content and form, the concern is with serial, structurally recurring societal processes: already the very act of decreeing such memoranda from above manipulates the archive of memory, even before its physical elimination is under threat…

…It is precisely this subtlety of form that condenses an atmosphere of fear. This fear is not being shattered, but quietly burned out — a kind of spiritual execution, carried out through insidious adaptation.

Perhaps it is here, in the works of Stephanie Stein, where the distinct power of the visual resides. There, in the atmospheric and the subliminal, dwells the indescribable — that horror which eludes the verbal layer, and which art remains tasked to point out. The immortal is art. A good that must be protected. It shall not be overwritten, not washed away, not burned.

​

Excerpts from the text by Nils Emmerichs

​​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​