Ständig kracht’s

Erik Steinbrecher bought a thick album in a Swiss second-hand shop.

It is a chronicle containing newspaper clippings, domestic and foreign news taken mainly from Swiss journals. It remains a mystery as to who carefully pasted the many pages of snippets. The collection begins around 1963. This is also, incidentally, the year of the artist's birth. Hence his interest in the find is no accident.

It is not merely the compactness of this volume that is remarkable, but also the specific selection of the reports. This mainly focuses on press handouts containing information about people involved in dramatic conflicts and catastrophes. In some places, celebrities one might remember today are rcognisable, such as Jo Siffert or Johnny Holiday. Less well known is the group of young women who fell victim to the brutal Chicago butcher, Richard Speck. Gerhard Richter made their faces famous in the art world when he painted them as a series (1966).

Steinbrecher copied the album using a book scanner and reassembled it into a handy paperback. His artist book is named after a catchy and resonant headline from the material: There’s Always Trouble.

The design of this artist's book is special in that it is printed in yellow throughout [offset 1/1]. The artist requested for the sheets to be printed on a four-colour press with the cyan, magenta, and black channels deactivated. In addition, all renderings appear reduced in size due to the selected format. It is something of an effort to read these miniatures. The artist therefore recommends viewing the book in good lighting conditions, outside and under the sun, for example.