Robert Steng

Robert Steng

Born 1972 lives and works in Germany

Represented by the Galerie La Ligne since 2023

Works by Robert Steng

The view of Robert Steng's works is impressive and for a brief moment one wonders: Is this perhaps even painting and what is the meaning of the term sculpture here? If you look along the walls, you see slabs a few centimetres thick. If you change your point of view, thick beams stretch out towards you, a few drawers stand on top of each other, two right angles push out of the room towards you. Lying planks, thick beams not exactly stacked on top of each other, wooden stumps at different heights next to each other: the subject and material is the wood, cut between a few millimetres to a centimetre thick and glued to a wooden panel. So is the term "sculpture" rather another deception? Using at least three types of wood and their different surfaces - from the cracked original state of old wood to the rough-sawn to the finely polished light surface and its various colour and condition stages - the eye feels its way along the haptic values of each individual surface and allows itself to be deceived by the effect of the perspective, the shadows, the bright areas and the apparent volumes.

In purely formal terms, these trompe l'oeil effects existed early in art: in ancient Roman mosaics, marble incrustations of the Renaissance or as inlays in Baroque and Rococo doors. Art has always attempted to feign spatiality in the surface. The graphic artist M. C. Escher comes to mind, whose optical confusion images inspired his contemporaries with 3D technology after he had been forgotten for a while.

However, this visual effect is not what is new about the mostly large-format works of Robert Steng, who wanted to become a painter or graphic artist at the age of 14 and trained as a cabinetmaker from 1992. He studied cultural studies in Tübingen and began working as an artist after building scenery for theatres in Berlin.

So he comes from wood, it is his familiar material in all conditions. The conscientious craftsman is revealed by the exact fit and precision of his work. However, since wood itself never comes to rest completely - especially in the radial cross-sections of end-grain wood - the artist must also take into account the natural processes of change. Whether he uses found pieces of wood such as veneered or solid door frames or drawers, seasoned boards of hardwood or fruitwoods, whether they are glazed, varnished or weathered, bleached or marked by efflorescence - the artistic eye always decides on their haptic expressiveness in an imagined pictorial context.

Dorothee L. Schaefer

Public collections (Selection)

ZKM, Karlsruhe

Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart

Edwin Scharff Museum, Neu-Ulm

Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart Arbeiterkammer Oberösterreich