Ausbelichtet
PB 0110 + ALEXANDER STEIG
Four objects. Twenty-eight unique pieces.
Leather tells of time. Usually, this story begins when a piece finds its person. With this edition, it began earlier.
Over three months, the artist Alexander Steig left pebbles from the Isar lying on our natural leather, exposed to the sunlight. Day by day, the leather darkened. Only where a stone lay did it stay light. As the sun moved across the sky, the shadows wandered and their edges softened. In this way, each pebble inscribed itself into the surface with its volume and its time.
One stone among many
The pebbles come from Alexander Steig’s walks along the Isar, which meanders, renaturalised, just a few steps from his home. From the seemingly endless, uniform gravel of its banks, he rarely takes more than one or two stones. Chosen by colour, shape and size, purely by intuition. He doesn’t call it collecting, but borrowing.
What remains
The image is neither print nor embossing. It is light that has taken its time. And it remains: with use, the leather continues to darken evenly, while the pattern of the stones endures. Over the years, a second trace settles on top. That of the person who carries it.
The stone as trace
A pebble has been shaped by glaciers and waters over millions of years. It bears no traces of its journey. It is the trace. Alexander Steig says: “In it, its becoming and its encounters have come to form as abrasion.” Things that grow more beautiful through use are at the heart of what we do at PB 0110. In these pebbles, we found a kinship.
The edition
Wallet · Card Case · Passport Cover · Laptop Case
Each object exists in seven pieces, and no two are alike. Every piece comes with a certificate signed by the artist. Available exclusively here.
Alexander Steig, Steinvölur Eyjarjardar, 2024, four channel closed circuit video staging (details), Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland. Photo: Daniel Starrason
Alexander Steig, Leinekiesel, 2021, four channel closed circuit video staging (details), feinkunst, Hannover. Photos: Marc Rodenberg
Alexander Steig
Alexander Steig, born in Hannover in 1968, lives and works as an artist and curator in Munich and Berlin. Since the mid-1990s, he has realised more than 300 projects and exhibitions in around twenty countries. Since 2018, he has devoted himself in media-based, project-specific work to the pebbles of various waters, the Leine, the Isar, the Inn, the Eyjafjörður, exploring their temporality, their polish and their shadows. For Ausbelichtet, he has applied this approach to objects of everyday use for the first time.