In the collective photographic and installation works, Steve Braun & Federico Braunschweig uses a pictorial symbolic language borrowed from ethnographic, ideological, or religious contexts. Historically charged set pieces from cultural history become props for his dramatically staged still lifes. Detached from their usual sphere of activity, the entanglement of meaning and form manifested in the symbol shifts, creating a new attribution in the recurring pictorial element.
Steve Braun composes picture legends that go beyond the two-dimensional depiction of the objectivity of his motifs. He drapes, arranges, constructs and processes the objects, emphasizes their materiality, and shows them as installations that take up the whole room. The distinction between sculptural examination and photographic strategy becomes blurred.
Artists biography
The artist duo “Braun and Braunschweig” consists of the photographer Steve Braun and the painter Federico Braunschweig. Their collaboration started around 2017 in Nuremberg, where they both studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. In their work, they shift the meaning of ideologic and religious symbols to reimagine the sacral aesthetics. Using a kaleidoscope of media ranging from traditional crafts such as pottery to VHS videotape, religious forms get altered to a point where their original intentions become unclear. From this state of uncertainty, the possibilities of Religion and Transcendence can be explored newly. Steve Braun and Federico Braunschweig mainly exhibit their work as a solo artist but exhibited as a duo twice to date. Their collaboration is ongoing.
ENTER THE BEYOND
Portals are symbolic of transition. They manifest the idea of other, impossible worlds. Portals stand for an ordering role in society and also the promise of being able to enter them.
With "enter the beyond," Braun und Braunschweig show the different outgrowths that the ideas of other worlds take on and how portals condition them.
The artists work on a monumental scale, using a wide range of media, techniques, and drawing on forms between science fiction and antiquity. Escapist dream meets apocalyptic nightmare. Sacral forms such as portals, obelisks, and altars are neglected or misappropriated and assembled to a shrine-like environment.
The result is a space in a vacuum that addresses disturbed relationship to the transcendent, at the interface between this world and the hereafter, where it is not yet decided which projection to believe.
Every work fulfills its function in the arrangement of structures. The obelisk, for example, is erected in the center but points outward. It projects a picture of a bygone utopia on the wall behind one of the portals, enhancing its meaning, not only to a literal, but a metaphorical entrance.
Another example is the body bag. It is on the same axis as a photography with a similar motif. The redundancy of repeating the topic in a material and a non-material way suggests that they both point to a single sign-in an established cultural code.
These links conceive a sacred place of an imaginary deity. While they form a logical unit, the object of worship remains uncertain. The unknown deity’s icons are contradictory, hidden, or vandalized, and the aesthetics of their destruction become their identity. Like on archaeologist sites, it is only possible to theorize and fantasize about their original intent.
The installation “Harvest” is a typical example of how the artworks of “enter the beyond” consist of historically charged set pieces whose connections form complex symbolical networks.
“Harvest” vaguely follows the form of an altar of sacrifice. Reproductions of the bust of David function as the offering. All broken and deformed, they obtain their individuality through the process of their destruction. Their scrap parts lie underneath in a brazier.
The bust which first gets reproduced, then deformed and finally burned, points to the idea of death as the transformation of the body.
Connecting other set pieces may evoke different narratives, like beauty, sacrifice, or industrial reproduction. As a whole, they build a pictorial myth that mimics the system of religious, symbolic language. Its new symbols are consolidated by being present throughout the exhibition. The same materials and topics get altered repeatedly, and the symbols’ interplay spreads to the entirety of works.
EXHIBITIONS
2019 "Of lemontrees on mercury" - Fotoszene Nürnberg e.V. - Nuremberg
2019 "Streaming Pictures" - MAKK - Cologne
2019 "Inception" - Kunstverein Amrum
2019 "Aller Anfang ist schön" - WiSo - Nuremberg
2018 "Real Fake" - Frapant Galerie - Hamburg
2018 "Portals" - Akademie Galerie - Nuremberg
2018 "Bierdusche" - Bühlers - Fürth
2018 "Kunstpreis Nürnberger" Nachrichten -Kunsthaus - Nuremberg
2018 "better together" - 7. Triennale der Photographie Hamburg - Festival Centre
2018 "Pictures for Donald" - SpinnereiGalerien - Werkschauhalle 12 - Leipzig
2017 "Best Of" - Auf AEG - Halle 20 - Nuremberg
2017 "Sonderfahrt 250" - Nuremberg
2017 "Meine Bilder“ - Gallery room of the Sparkasse „Kassette“ - Nuremberg
2016 "Zustandsbewertung" - Borgo Ensemble - Nuremberg
2016 "Scheitern" - Kunstverein Essenheim - Essenheim
2015 "Größenwahn" - „Heute“ - Nuremberg
2015 "Gold" - Künstlerbund Schwabach - Schwabach
2015 "Klassenfahrt" - Galerie Evelyn Drewes - Hamburg
2015 "Schwarze Arbeiten" - Kunstverein Graz - Regensburg
2014 "Konflikt" - Katholische Akademie - Munich
AWARDS
2019 "Photography competition - Miteinander" - Kulturamt der Stadt Regensburg
2016 "Kunstkalender „Junge Kunst in Bayern" - LfA Förderbank
2014 "Oskar-Karl-Forster Stipendium" - Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg
2012 "DigiArt - Photokina Contest" - Photokina - Cologne
PUBLICATION
2020 "A Piece my Cake" - Online Exhibition - cold bench - Colombo (ITA)
2020 "Transformation" - Artist Feature - ARTCONNCECT
2020 "Locked in - Steve Braun | V-Mann im Hausarrest" - Artist Feature - Curt Magazin
2020 "UTB Photography" - UNDER THE BRIDGE Magazine - Spring 2020
2020 "Exhibition 3" - Online Exhibition - Floor Magazine
2020 "A Piece of Mind" - Artist in Resicence Online - cold bench - Colombo (ITA)
2020 "Gathering" - Online Exhibition - curated by Amy Parrish
2020 "Nostalgia" - Online Exhibition -Darkside Collective
2020 "Supporting Emerging Artists" - Artist Feature - Dark Yellow Dot
2020 "IN YOUR HANDS" - Newspaper of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne
2019 "FLOAT Magazine" - Portfolio Feature (Keiner von uns / None of us Series)
2019 "Average ART" - Issue 37 (August)
2019 "maybe. Magazine" - Magazine for analogue photography
