Contemporary Art Station: Steffi Rodigas

The catalogue containing photographs of landscapes, animals and people is nearly inexhaustible and yet I am constantly on the hunt for the extraordinary. The research for my series "Children of the world" led me to the world-famous photographer Steve McCurry. I got his permission to reimagine his incredible, meaningful pictures in artistic form and I am highly proud of it! Art gives me the opportunity and the freedom to work through and process issues as well as expressing my thoughts and opinions. The result was a collection of many critical works on a whole variety of topics and conflicts of our world. In 2018 I tried to summarise the catastrophic, often ignored and overlooked consequences of climate change in the piece "Climate apocalypse". Equally, I wanted to denounce the careless handling of our bodies of water in the three-dimensional depiction "If the oceans die, we die too". I explored this matter further with the paintings "Too late", "Safe travels" and "Enjoy your meal". Topics like the overflow of media, the extortion of the Amazon region, chick shredding or world politics filled my canvases in a similar manner. From my urge to try different techniques and styles or even to abstract, the most diverse pictures have emerged. I developed a new kind of art for myself accordingly, which I call "Art in Art". The origin for this is based on my own philosophy "Don't waste anything". Carefully foraged leaves with blended paint scraps found their place in the form of squares, later circles, birds or feet. Art in Art is one whole result, made up of individual small artworks. The viewer is treated to a vast number of tiny parts, each with its own colourful meaningfulness that can inspire imagination. Simultaneously, the big picture sets no boundaries to the joy of exploration.