Alfred Steiner

Alfred Steiner describes his work as drawing influence from both “art historical and pop cultural sources, especially those with a penchant for the grotesque,” and lists Hieronymus Bosch and Homer Simpson among his inspirations. Steiner’s cartoonish watercolors are made through a laborious process: he slowly gathers fragments of unseemly images—including those of toys, half-eaten fruit, rotting teeth, dead insects, sea creatures, artillery, and sexual organs—that he then pieces together into narrative compositions or resemblances of pop culture icons. “To make one of these works, I begin by choosing a character,” he explains. “Then I free associate while looking at the forms that make up the character, just as one might look at a cloud or Rorschach blot...These works are hybrids of the stylized and the naturalistic.” Steiner’s practice is also informed by the artist’s prior 15-year career as a copyright and trademark lawyer, and his extensive knowledge of intellectual property regulations.