Stephanie Stern is a fine artist working mostly with photography and drawing. Her latest exhibition, Under Pressure. ΔS — Orders of Glass, curated by Bettina Siegele at the Neue Galerie in Innsbruck, is running until 8. August 2026. The exhibition marks a major milestone for her, blending her signature photography with original drawings and high-tech photolithography.

The artistic approach is rooted heavily in the process of material translation. These mirrored surfaces dynamically shift their colours based on the viewer’s movement within the gallery, demanding an unmediated bodily and sensory experience before intellectual analysis can occur. It is a dense, rhythmic experience that challenges how we look at the ordinary objects around us and, more importantly, how we look at our screens. Meeting her in her studio in Vienna, she shares more about her artistic approach to everyday objects, photography as a non-fixed truth and the role that artists play in society. 

The Genesis of a Bouquet: Disrupting Still Life

For Stern, the road to Under Pressure began not with a conceptual framework, but with an intuitive sensory flash. She was struck by a vision of specific colours, which she immediately sought to anchor within the classical tradition of still life. Her entry point was a common, yet entirely unfamiliar botanical choice: the stinging nettle.

„Still life itself was always a genre which was considered not important, but for me, it’s a cultural approach to how we order things. How we set a table, how we pour water, how we make a bouquet. In those little everyday actions, we reveal our entire relationship to the material world.“

Seeking out a local florist in Hitzing, Stern commissioned a bouquet composed entirely of nettles – a proposition that was met with excitement. This unconventional arrangement became the foundation for a fluid, evolving studio process. After documenting the initial bundle, Stern systematically deconstructed and rearranged the nettles alongside various other flora, tracking the shifting visual landscape of the composition.

„A flower has something invisible, something safe about it. People have an emotional approach to flowers. Making a bundle of them is a ritual that spans across human cultures. But when you look closer at what I’ve done, it reveals something more complex. Image-making for me isn’t rational. I suddenly get an image of a nettle bouquet in my head; I follow it, and when the final image looks back at me, I’m often surprised. It reveals how you look at the world – and that isn’t always comfortable.“

By leaving the interpretation open-ended, she ensures that the exhibition functions as a tapestry of distinct narrative entry points, depending entirely on what the viewer brings to the room.

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Raya Sotirova: How would you describe your artistic approach? 

Stephanie Stern: There are different layers you can enter. The first is my approach to image-making itself. The second is the camera we use daily. And the third is the translation process – taking a digital image and translating it back into another technology, like photolithography. That translation process always brings us knowledge about both the quality of the digital image (what it really is) and the grammar of the new technology.

Underneath all of this, you find a system of order – how we order things, whether it’s on a table, in a bouquet, or the microscopic layout of a microchip. In the end, for me, image-making is all about colour, rhythm, form, and what it tells us outside of language. I want to create different kinds of experiences through things like mirroring surfaces, powder, repetition, and patterns. The pictures look different because I let the material speak. When I approach a material, I don’t dominate it so that it looks exactly like a design I made; it is a collaboration. But my underlying attitude and how I approach my practice stay the same.

What does a typical day in your studio look like? 

A big part of my practice is drawing. I do this almost every day, wherever I am. It is directly from the body and my mood, completely unmediated. Beyond that, it’s about playing with materials, experimenting with light, and handling the heavy production steps it takes to get to a final printed picture. 

Can you walk me through the life of a work from first idea to exhibition? 

For me, an idea usually begins with an image or a sensory element rather than a strict concept. I don’t work rationally in the beginning; I just intuitively follow an image, like the flash of colour or the sudden mental image of a bouquet of nettles. There is a huge room for coincidences, spontaneity, and intuition. It starts with a sudden intuitive prompt – like a colour or a material choice. Then comes the physical gathering and arranging, like working with the florist to bundle the nettles. From there, I photograph it, which introduces the grammar and language of the camera. Then, the digital file goes through a translation process back into an analogue system, like photolithography or drawing. Finally, the works are brought into the physical archive of the gallery space, where I experiment with layout, rhythm, and how different narratives map across the walls.

The biggest moment of uncertainty happens when you go into the gallery room and see all the pictures on the wall together for the first time. You truly don’t know until that final moment if the pieces will find a rhythm and work together.

Many of your works seem to function like visual languages. What interests you about systems of communication? 

What actually drew me to it is realising the limits of language. I am fascinated by how image-making isn’t related to language at all. It gives us an entirely different kind of human experience. I am interested in how systems of communication change our awareness and behaviour. Technical systems like Photoshop rules or digital camera sensors have their own grammar, frameworks, and design rules. They add a specific layer of authorship to everything we see.

What can photography do that language cannot? 

Photography can make us relate to the material world through our five senses, our bodies, and our hearts before the intellectual mind takes over. It captures a specific path of light reflecting in a single direction at a single moment, offering a direct visual experience words can’t reach.

How do you think meaning is produced in an artwork? 

Meaning is highly subjective and is produced through a process of letting go. The artist creates the work, but when the viewer enters the room, they bring their own stories, interpretations, and backgrounds. Through the gaze and participation of the other person, meaning is born, allowing me to get out of my own thinking.

Your work often passes through multiple stages of digitisation and transformation. Why is that process important? 

The translation process reveals the true nature of the mediums we use. By taking a digital image and translating it back into an older technology like photolithography, I can truly see what a digital image is. It exposes the hidden steps, numerical values, and frameworks that usually remain invisible when we look at a screen. It’s like translating between languages; you understand both much better.

How has digital technology and AI changed the way you think about images and authorship?

It has eroded my trust in them. Because I work closely with digital images, I know exactly how manipulative they are. A digital image isn’t a fixed truth; it’s a probability based on numerical code hit by light. I am fascinated by how digital representations dictate human behaviour and distort our relationship to reality. For example, when travelling in Indonesia, I noticed people visiting physical places purely to reproduce a very specific, pre-fabricated digital angle they saw on social media. The digital image circulating online actually dictates how we travel through and perceive real spaces.

AI places the question of human authorship under pressure. But it also makes me value physical handicrafts much more. Today, if someone makes a flawed, „ugly“ painting or a freehand drawing, it carries a unique value because it comes straight from the body and human subconscious, completely unmediated by a machine or an AI algorithm. I love that raw human presence. What concerns me is the total loss of an image’s relationship to truth. Even top digital forensics experts can no longer track what has been manipulated. I worry about an image industry that manufactures behaviour and dictates how we must look at the world, stripping away our ability to truly see the raw material reality around us. 

Are you interested in creating order or disrupting it?

I am interested in exploring how our systems of order function. Every kind of order we establish automatically produces a disorder somewhere else. For example, to create the pristine, microscopic order of a silicon microchip, a massive amount of environmental disorder is produced. By bringing an unexpected material like a stinging nettle into the traditional order of a floral bouquet, I am playing directly with that boundary between order and disruption. 

Much of your work explores the boundary between image and reality. Why does that question matter today?

It matters because we live surrounded by an overwhelming image industry designed to dictate how things should look. We are constantly absorbing manipulated digital values and pre-programmed angles on Instagram. Exploring this boundary forces us to reflect on our position and how we actually relate to the tangible world around us.

Photography absolutely does not reveal reality. For me, a photograph constructs a perspective. It reveals my own highly subjective position, my background, and my privileges in the world, like where I am standing, why I can travel, and what I choose to select or overlook.

Is the camera more of a witness, a translator, or a collaborator? 

It sits right between a translator and a collaborator. Making a photograph is a strict process of translation and selection. Because light reflects in all directions at every moment, choosing a specific angle means you are translating one exact path of light through the camera’s unique technical language.

You often focus on texture and material surfaces. What can materials communicate that words cannot? 

Materials communicate through direct physical experience. When I stand in front of a highly engineered material like a massive silicon wafer or molybdenum, it shifts colours as you move through the space. You don’t approach it intellectually or verbally at first; your body experiences its scale, its surface, and its presence through your five senses. It communicates an immediate reality that language can’t replicate.

What do you hope viewers feel before they begin analysing your work intellectually?

I hope they just have an unmediated visual and sensory experience through their senses and their hearts. I want them to feel the rhythm, the colours, and the atmosphere of the room before trying to decode the technical or physical processes behind it. You don’t have to understand the physics of a technology to relate to its material reality.

What is the most surprising interpretation someone has offered about your work?

During my first solo gallery show, Hot Water and Wine, with Gabi Sen, I exhibited compact, deep blue images featuring tiny toy animals, which I made during the pandemic. The frames were sealed behind matte glass that completely absorbed the light, creating a very contained, theatre-like room.

I expected people to focus heavily on the psychology of the animals, but to my surprise, absolutely no one talked about them! Instead, viewers were completely captivated by the overwhelming atmosphere of the colour blue and how the light was absorbed. It taught me a lot about how people bring their own intuitive stories into a gallery.

Were there any pivotal moments that changed the direction of your career? 

A major turning point was shifting away from a purely conceptual mindset. Early on, I felt art had to be rigid and conceptual to be valid, but over time, I completely lost that belief. Embracing daily drawing and letting the material realities guide me completely changed the trajectory of my practice.

When I first started studying in Vienna around 2011, it gave me my initial framework for thinking about art. But it was also a time when I was wrestling with what art „should“ be, mistakenly believing that painting or drawing wasn’t as important as strict conceptual frameworks. In London, I shifted my focus more toward sculpture. Looking deeply into sculpture and three-dimensional forms completely transformed how I handled photography. It taught me to treat the camera not just as a flat window but as a tool for exploring physical objects, weights, and spatial orders.

Which artists have had the greatest impact on your thinking? 

The work and radical gestures of artists like Ad Reinhardt, alongside historic female still-life and abstract painters, who quietly built their own visual languages against the dominant narratives of their times.

Do artists have a responsibility to society?

Art should offer an alternative way to relate to our world. It provides a vital space where we can slow down and process our experiences through colours, forms, and rhythms, freeing us from the constant demands of a language- and text-driven society.

I don’t believe your artwork has to be explicitly about a political topic, but as an artist, you absolutely have a responsibility to know where you stand. We operate within deeply political corporate systems, such as social media platforms and data-tracking software. You must be conscious of the systems you choose to support, who you work with, how you present your work, and how you position yourself in relation to your privileges and the cruelties happening in the world. The gesture and attitude behind your practice are where your responsibility lies.

What conversations in contemporary art excite you right now?

I am really excited about the renewed appreciation for physical handicrafts, drawing, and painting. The conversation around how we can use tactile art to ground ourselves and resist the total monetisation of our digital lives and data is incredibly interesting.

I will continue diving deeper into my original ink drawings. Showing them in my current exhibition has unlocked a new level of concentration for me. At the same time, I am deeply engaged in pushing the boundaries of my translation processes between digital images and large-scale silicon wafer photolithography.

What advice would you give emerging artists navigating today’s art world? 

Commit to a daily or weekly creative practice and stick with it as a continuation. Don’t worry about trying to fit into a specific commercial identity or market expectation. Focus entirely on the unique way your mind and body respond to materials, and let that continuation build your language over time.

What concerns you about the future of visual culture? 

I am concerned that we are losing our ability to look at the overlooked. If we only travel, consume, and live to reproduce a handful of standardised, pre-programmed digital views, we risk flattening our visual culture entirely and losing our subjective, individual connections to reality.

What advice would you give young artists trying to develop their own voice and style?

Treat your art as a dedicated, continuous practice; it is a continuation. It isn’t about an overnight intention to be special or unique. Everyone’s consciousness is naturally subjective. If you show up every day or every week, follow your intuition, reorganise your gaze, reflect on it, and do it again, a unique approach to life will naturally manifest in the work. I am constantly surprised by how incredibly diverse the art world is. Even within a single city like Vienna, you will find entirely different art scenes with completely different vocabularies and approaches to what art should be. 

There isn’t just one monolithic „art world“.

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Instead of being empty and minimalist, the room feels full and alive, mirroring the complex mix of technology and environmental clutter in our modern world. Ultimately, Under Pressure. ΔS — Orders of Glass doesn’t force a single lesson onto the audience. It creates a space with many different stories, where the camera acts as a partner and technology is unmasked to show the real, physical materials hidden behind our flat screens. Stephanie Stern explores what happens when ordinary objects, language, and digital technologies collide, creating works that challenge how we perceive reality itself.

| Raya Sotirova