More than 100 years ago, a man in a suit stood for hours at the tomb of Pope Julius II in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. He had traveled from Vienna, as he had done several times before, to stand before this one sculpture that forms part of the tomb: Michelangelo\u2019s Moses<\/i>. Only a year later, this man would begin an academic text with the following words: \u201cI must preface by admitting that I am no connoisseur of art, but a layman. For many of the means and effects of art, I actually lack proper understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the following twenty pages, the founding father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, despite his \u201clack of proper understanding,\u201d found plenty of words to analytically dissect Michelangelo\u2019s Moses<\/i> and describe the artist\u2019s \u201cintention.\u201d It is curious that the foremost advocate of unconscious determinants should seek such definite intentions in art. Following Freud\u2019s interpretation, which deviates freely from the Old Testament, we see Moses frozen in the moment when the will of the ego gains control over the instinctual impulses of the id. For Michelangelo, known for his aggression, these were crucial themes; the artist supposedly sublimated his inner conflicts through the act of working the material itself. The personal struggle is resolved in the artwork.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":123445,"id":123445,"title":"PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025 copy","filename":"PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","filesize":482337,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/everything-not-saved-will-be-lost\/portrait_charlie_stein_by_dale_grant_2025-copy\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"portrait_charlie_stein_by_dale_grant_2025-copy","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":123426,"date":"2025-10-13 08:46:35","modified":"2025-10-13 08:46:35","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1282,"height":1920,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","thumbnail-width":64,"thumbnail-height":96,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","medium-width":1282,"medium-height":1920,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","medium_large-width":1282,"medium_large-height":1920,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","large-width":1282,"large-height":1920,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy-1026x1536.jpg","1536x1536-width":1026,"1536x1536-height":1536,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","2048x2048-width":1282,"2048x2048-height":1920,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":8,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PORTRAIT_Charlie_Stein_by_Dale_Grant_2025-copy.jpg","wpvr_mobile-width":1282,"wpvr_mobile-height":1920}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":"Charlie Stein by Dale Grant.\r\n"}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
A hundred years later, the description of the present reads like a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 written on the eve of two world wars: Rapid technological progress devalues human labor, the environment collapses in favor of free-market interests, political unrest turns into nationalist madness and social structures begin to crumble. In short: everything gets higher, faster, further \u2014 but, unfortunately, also worse.<\/p>\n
Instead of a tomb sculpture in a Roman church, we now find ourselves before paintings in the CCA Kunsthalle on Mallorca\u2014though the Centro Cultural Andratx itself, architecturally, resembles a sacred fortress. Stein\u2019s previous paintings, in a sense, connect to Freud\u2019s psychoanalytic tradition: she renders visible the effects of the environment on the subject. Her paintings appear socially critical and contemporary, exposing feelings of isolation and disorientation without depicting any explicit technological references. The symbols she deliberately integrates can just as easily signify their opposite.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":123473,"id":123473,"title":"o2","filename":"o2.png","filesize":2843407,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2.png","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/everything-not-saved-will-be-lost\/o2-2\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"o2-2","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":123426,"date":"2025-10-15 10:25:29","modified":"2025-10-15 10:25:29","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1920,"height":1357,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2.png","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":90,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2.png","medium-width":1920,"medium-height":1357,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2.png","medium_large-width":1920,"medium_large-height":1357,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2.png","large-width":1920,"large-height":1357,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2-1536x1086.png","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":1086,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2.png","2048x2048-width":1920,"2048x2048-height":1357,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2.png","trp-custom-language-flag-width":18,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o2.png","wpvr_mobile-width":1920,"wpvr_mobile-height":1357}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"6","caption":"Photography by David Bonet Ense\u00f1at."}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
In her current and largest solo exhibition to date at the Mallorcan Kunsthalle, we see two central figures that reappear in different positions\u2014entwined, leaning against one another, or pushing against each other. Their poses are insistently ambiguous, even contradictory: violent struggle or loving embrace. Because of their wet-look puffer jackets, the genderless figures cannot be clearly identified; their inflated garments envelop them from head to toe, hinting at opposition only through color\u2014pink and black. Their interwoven arrangements, precisely because of this suggested dichotomy, recall chromosomes: X and Y, female and male, pink and black. As if in a laboratory on an open day, the paintings hang individually along the walls, the white space of the art hall dominating the presentation. It feels as though research reports have been visualized and pinned to the wall, allowing the audience to grasp the current state of study. Spoiler: it leaves an eerie feeling<\/em>.<\/p>\n A single, latex-covered figure stands tensely, hands bound behind its back. In another painting, a latex-clad portrait from head to shoulders appears \u201cmore clearly\u201d female, long blond hair cascading over latex skin. Other works suggest femininity through contours of hips and breasts, only to have this certainty undermined by the next image showing a close-up of a thigh. A recurring syringe implies hormonal treatment in various contexts: illness, pregnancy, bodybuilding.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":123474,"id":123474,"title":"o1","filename":"o1.png","filesize":2270646,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1.png","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/everything-not-saved-will-be-lost\/o1-2\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"o1-2","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":123426,"date":"2025-10-15 10:26:03","modified":"2025-10-15 10:26:03","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1920,"height":1357,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1.png","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":90,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1.png","medium-width":1920,"medium-height":1357,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1.png","medium_large-width":1920,"medium_large-height":1357,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1.png","large-width":1920,"large-height":1357,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1-1536x1086.png","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":1086,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1.png","2048x2048-width":1920,"2048x2048-height":1357,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1.png","trp-custom-language-flag-width":18,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/o1.png","wpvr_mobile-width":1920,"wpvr_mobile-height":1357}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"6","caption":"Photography by David Bonet Ense\u00f1at."}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":" The complex network of politics, society, economy, technology and environment that holds our world together is tangled in many places. The Donald Trumps and Elon Musks of our world post memes that shape global events and immortalize themselves in the memes that their behavior spawns. They decry censorship yet tolerate no dissenting opinions on their platforms. They demand freedom while embodying everything that contradicts their ideology. They proclaim equality while deporting those whose skin color differs from their own. To exist consciously is to be exposed to contradictions: Dubito, ergo sum.<\/i><\/p>\n It is such circumstances that Charlie Stein playfully transforms into something deceptively light, like kittens floating in water, only to reveal their underlying menace. She shows us that the image politics of our time have detached from \u201ctruth\u201d itself and now position truth in relation to its own antithesis: realism versus surrealism, man versus woman, alienation versus intimacy, subjective truth versus objective explanation. Would Freud, despite all ambiguity, still have found a definite \u201eintention\u201c in this tension after all?<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":123444,"id":123444,"title":"Screenshot 2025-10-13 at 10.40.32 AM","filename":"Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","filesize":232784,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/everything-not-saved-will-be-lost\/screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10-40-32-am\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10-40-32-am","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":123426,"date":"2025-10-13 08:46:24","modified":"2025-10-13 08:46:24","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":994,"height":1268,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","thumbnail-width":75,"thumbnail-height":96,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","medium-width":994,"medium-height":1268,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","medium_large-width":994,"medium_large-height":1268,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","large-width":994,"large-height":1268,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","1536x1536-width":994,"1536x1536-height":1268,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","2048x2048-width":994,"2048x2048-height":1268,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":9,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-10.40.32-AM.jpg","wpvr_mobile-width":994,"wpvr_mobile-height":1268}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":"Photography by David Bonet Ense\u00f1at.\r\n"}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":" It is worth tracing the conceptual framework the artist has installed. Charlie Stein titled her central series Parthenogenesis<\/i>, while the exhibition launched under the title Everything not saved will be lost<\/i>. The latter quotes the Nintendo-branded memento mori<\/i> of the 1990s and 2000s, translated here into a painterly credo of documentation. What once served as a warning signal for video-game enthusiasts, Stein transforms into the potential of painting to literally record and continuously interrogate the present. Painting as \u201canalog hard drive\u201d and \u201cresistant archive.\u201d<\/p>\n The exhibition title is linked to the series of works, \u201cParthenogenesis\u201d<\/em>, which literally translates to \u201cvirgin birth.\u201d The examples of parthenogenesis that occur in nature are not the same as the \u201cimmaculate conception\u201d of the Virgin Mary. Etymologically, the word itself comes from the idea of creating life from an egg that hasn\u2019t been fertilized. Especially in natural science, parthenogenesis encompasses the birth of a clone of the mother, usually of female sex. Both in literature\u2014such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Herland”\u2014and in mythology\u2014Gaia, Nyx, Hera\u2014there are examples of parthenogenesis, that can inspire ideas of societies and worlds like those of the Amazons or matriarchal systems. Models that, accelerated by the information distribution technologies of the past four decades, have gained new momentum and are increasingly being simulated in order to present alternatives to the patriarchally-shaped history of modernity.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":123477,"id":123477,"title":"hi_DSC1889ss","filename":"hi_DSC1889ss.png","filesize":1905209,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss.png","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/everything-not-saved-will-be-lost\/hi_dsc1889ss\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"hi_dsc1889ss","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":123426,"date":"2025-10-15 10:52:32","modified":"2025-10-15 10:52:32","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1920,"height":1281,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss.png","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":85,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss.png","medium-width":1920,"medium-height":1281,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss.png","medium_large-width":1920,"medium_large-height":1281,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss.png","large-width":1920,"large-height":1281,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss-1536x1025.png","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":1025,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss.png","2048x2048-width":1920,"2048x2048-height":1281,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss.png","trp-custom-language-flag-width":18,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/hi_DSC1889ss.png","wpvr_mobile-width":1920,"wpvr_mobile-height":1281}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"6","caption":"Photography by David Bonet Ense\u00f1at.\r\n"}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":" Finally, this brings us back to Freud. More interesting than his analysis of Michelangelo\u2019s Moses<\/i> are his motives for making it. Freud\u2019s repeated visits coincided with the period when C. G. Jung, once his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, had evolved into a usurper of psychoanalysis. Feeling betrayed in his role as intellectual father, Freud describes Moses as acting and thinking precisely as he himself must have felt at that time. Martin Schuster, psychologist and co-founder of the \u201cCologne School of Art Therapy,\u201d wrote insightfully about Freud\u2019s reflection: \u201cThus the artwork becomes a projection surface upon which less the \u2018objective\u2019 truth of psychoanalytic interpretation is reflected than the subjective truth of the interpreter.\u201d<\/p>\n This, ultimately, is the source of the eerie feelings<\/i> Charlie Stein\u2019s paintings evoke\u2014as eerie as reality itself.<\/i> Stein condenses the images of our present and their ambivalences. Projection surfaces for the subjective truths of their interpreters.<\/p>\n"}]},"yoast_head":"\n