I am Patrick John Steiner, sculptor and photographer.
Born in Switzerland in 1968 I left my country at the age of 17 and went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara where I studied Sculpture. In that same period I was fortunate to meet the distinguished Uruguayan sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca, a prominent figure of universal constructivism and disciple of Torres Garcia. At the 1989 Venice Biennale, Fonseca invited me to be his assistant in setting up the Uruguayan art pavilion. During those years, my sculptures followed constructivist principles, heavily influenced by this formative encounter.
In 1997, following Gonzalo Fonseca's death, I underwent my first stylistic transformation, pursuing a more intimate and personal artistic dimension. My subjects became increasingly conceptual and my artistic language more distinctive. Until 2001, I mounted significant exhibitions and public projects in collaboration with Esther Seidel, a German artist who was first my friend and later became my wife.
Beginning in 2014, I departed from sculpture as I had studied and practiced it, turning to photography for the first time in my career. In my photographic work, I explore the silent dialogue between Universe, Man, and Nature, where spirituality emerges not as an escape from the world, but as a deep immersion in its mysteries. The human figure in my images often becomes a metaphor for a universal inner journey: the search for the essential through the contemplation of the whole.
I have created several series set in the marble quarries of Carrara—one of my soul places—where the human body emerges from darkness as a primordial manifestation of existence. In my works, elements of nature are not separate from the human, but manifestations of a single spiritual essence. Even when I portray landscapes devoid of figures, they become metaphors for the spiritual path: visible up to a certain point, then enveloped in the mystery of the indefinite.
My journey from sculpting physical matter to capturing reality in motion through the stillness of an instant has led me to develop a visual language that explores the tension between materiality and transcendence, between the manifest and the invisible, freeing itself from pre-packaged definitions and inviting a deeper connection with the essence of things.
I live and work in Florence Italy
