As a scholarship holder of the Johannes Mosbach Foundation Jochen Stierberger received a grant of 110 euros for material expenses. Evidence of the possible investments or the exact use of the grant is not required by the scholarship holders. The resulting financial and artistical freedom inspired to document the financial grant. The series 'Über die Möglicheiten von Material' is however not only testimony of the artist's own artistic performance, but asks the viewer to critically question the tension of material-art-object.
At the center of Jochen Stierberger's photographic work is what is apparently not visible.
Using a conceptual approach, he creates a reduced pictorial language, which adapts to the respective subject, always oscillates between documentation and conscious staging. Using a conceptual approach, he creates a reduced pictorial language, which adapts to the respective subject, always oscillates between documentation and conscious staging. In this way, his artistic works dissipate the viewer's habitual habits of viewing and provoke him to complement his existing associations with his own associations. He continues to play the game of reality and fiction, contemporary documentation and classical visual language, past and present, in his current work. In 'Familienportrait' (2017), he combines formal elements, such as a balanced image composition of classic family portraits of 19th-century painting and photography, with pictures of his own tattoos. As a result, the work not only gives us an intimate look at the artist's identity and life, but also as a hybrid photographic evidence of contemporary body cult and traditional portraits. Thus, photography in Stierberger's body of work is understood not only as a medium that intends to document a reality, but as one that challenges the viewer subtly to perceive the previously hidden, independent reality.
