Adriane Steckhan

About Adriane Steckhan

Adriane Steckhan keeps working on the photograph until only the color pigment remains. She uses sponges to separate the paper from the color layer that is transferred to an acrylic polymer skin. The term “scrubbing” takes on an entirely new meaning in her work.

With this process, Adriane Steckhan creates pieces that reimagine the medium of photography and develop something new and individual from it. The surface of the image becomes a thin, translucent membrane that still reveals the motif, yet almost lets us peek through it to see what may lie beyond it.

But what is this beyond? The atmospherically dense motifs appear abstract at first glance, only gradually revealing themselves. The longer we look at these images, the more figures emerge from their depths, evoking themes of temporality and transience.

Adriane Steckhan (*1971 in Hamburg), studied art at the HAW Hamburg and at Wimbledon College of Arts in London. Her work has been supported by numerous grants, such as the Karl Heinz Ditze Foundation (2002), the Postgraduate Award, Bristol, England (2002/03), and the Hamburg Cultural Foundation (2009). Recent exhibitions of her work have taken place at the Drostei in Pinneberg (2015) and at Depot K, Freiburg (2020). In 2011, Adriane Steckhan founded the Atelierhaus Breite Straße in Hamburg. Since 2018, she has held a teaching position for scholarship winners at the Lichtwark school of the HAW Hamburg.

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