I am Steit Slings. Interested in Art, Music, Food, Travel, Life. Ever since I could pronounce the word I wanted to become an architect. Build stuff. Make the world a better place trough architecture. At an age of about 10 years old I bought a Sinclair ZX81 with 16Kb with my brother. The modern fridge has more memory. More memory than the Sinclair, not my brother. My educational journey took me via architecture and art into IT where I’ve spend my time building digital architecture. Build stuff. The love for architecture and art never left. Late 2019 I decided to spend more time doing the things I love the most. Make stuff, make art.

Born in an age where computers and digital media were new and daring. Computers and art combinations were rare. At the Art academy I created installations that were computer operated or on-screen manifestations, alongside with more traditional forms of art. Nowadays I work with digital media, image processing, (spray) paint, 3D printing, Clay, wood, metal etc. I like to choose the material, style and form that fits the story I want to share.
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Artist statement

My work starts from a fascination with how we experience the world. Not only through sight, sound and touch, but through the meanings we assign to what we perceive. The works I make are conceptual in nature where the idea prevails over the visual aspect, making them often less decorative and more engaging. My works are conversation starters more than they are beautiful pictures. Conversations to have with others and with oneself.

My main body of work consists of two lines, two projects that are loosely connected. The Virtual Journeys project started with a photo story was made in Tokyo in 1992. The Senses Project, although i did not call it that back then, started with a fascination with the words; Hear, Look, Smell, Taste, Touch and Learn. Both projects started while I was still at the Academy in Rotterdam where I graduated in 1994. I used both in my graduation exhibition under the name “World Communication”

In Virtual Journeys, I walk select urban routes like Berlin’s former wall, Tokyo’s Shibuya station, London’s dragon-guarded gates, and translate these experiences into layered visual collages. Created as graphical novels, each page is built from photo fragments processed to reduce the photographic quality and evoke the memory of a place rather than its realism. For me it is not about creating the perfect photograph, it’s about transferring the idea, the feeling of a place, the story of a city. These are not travel guides, but impressions that invite the viewer to engage, not just observe. For a brief moment in time the viewer is transported to this city. Discovering that in far away foreign places people are doing the same things we all do.

The Senses Project, meanwhile, explores how familiar words can open unfamiliar questions. Here I use the main 6 senses we have to invite the viewer to a journey of self-reflection and relation to the artwork. As main senses I define the traditional 5 physical ones and Learn&Know for the mind. I combine these senses with subjects that connect cultures making the viewer ask the same questions repeatedly; ‘What am I looking at?”, “How do I feel about this?”, “What do I think?”. In changing contexts the same questions have different answers.

Whether working with text, print, resin, or 3D-printed objects, I approach each material with care and curiosity, choosing what serves the idea best and making combinations where I think its supports the story I am telling. Some I make myself, some are produced for me. Art is about the story, not about how talented the artist is.

Underneath it all is a desire to build connections. I see art as a way to tell stories, personal, cultural, visual, sensory. Stories that ask us to slow down and recognise the ways we’re more alike than different.