Ouroboros, a term which refers to the intertwining makeup of the universe, sets the cosmos as a stage to locate the margins of our perceptual understanding. These images engage with materiality of objects and spaces to reveal a network, one that challenges a universal scientific ordering, and highlights the gap of unknowability. Utilizing visual cues such as odd cropping techniques, bold colors, tonal shifts, and decontextualization, the work focuses on a sense of existential and ecological unease. Connected in a nonlinear manner, photographs of common scientific objects live among natural phenomena, astronomical observers, and anomalous landscapes, all of which accentuate the paradox between beauty and dark uneasiness. My focus on existential questions relies on locating the nebulous lines between allure and an uncanny discomfort.
David Steinberg (b. 1990) is a photographer and artist based between Queens, NY and Minneapolis, MN. Utilizing photography, installations, and books, his practice engages with personal histories, scientific and ecological thought. He has taught photography at Syracuse University as an adjunct instructor and produced work for the New York Times and various editorial outlets. Recently his fine-art work has been shown at the Houston Center for Photography, Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College, the Royal Photographic Society in the UK, in several small galleries on the East Coast, and in works published by Conveyer Studio. In 2021, in addition to a solo show at Kunsthalle Turku, he will present work at the Reminders Photography Stronghold in Tokyo and Kunsthalle Turku in Finland, and spend time as an artist-in-resident at ISSP in Latvia, and Laimun, in Italy. He earned a BA in political science from the University of Minnesota in 2013, a certificate from the International Center of Photography in 2015, and an MFA from Syracuse University in 2020.
