I know Charlie Stein

High above the tree-lined Landwehr Canal in Berlin, on a studio wall in Charlie Stein’s workspace, these flat canvases hang – quiet and strange. Titled Small Lovers, this new series introduces a cast of surreal, ambiguous figures. They join the expanding universe of Stein’s neo-surrealist world, rubbing elbows with pregnant cyborgs, seductive robots, vampiric glass cats, dystopian AirPods, panicked latex horses, melting somethings, rubber gloves, and other creatures that emerge in endless, placeless spaces – washed in pastel light, framed in classical composition.

Charlie Stein lives and works here, sharing her home and studio with all her creatures. Painting is labor, and labor is clearly separated from life. Even her studio is so orderly it feels like a set designer’s idea of an artist’s studio – except one who’s never actually stepped inside one. It’s hard to believe Stein’s prolific output leaves so few traces: brushes, paint, tools, canvases—everything in place. Just like her technique: precise. Just like her public image: controlled. Just like the referential world she paints from: dense and intentional.

Critics have called her a post-internet artist, a feminist surrealist, even a neo-pop painter. Stein herself roots her practice in conceptual art: “I like that I’m difficult to label, it means the work exists in an interesting in-between state,” she says, hanging her paint-smudged smock – tailored after a photo of Gustav Klimt’s – on a silent valet.

That nod to the Secessionist icon is just one example of how Stein reclaims the painter’s identity for herself. She casually quotes book covers from Kippenberger and Dokoupil, poses twice on her own catalogue in a copied stance, and hangs her graduation show like a Velázquez salon. She paints luscious cakes and symbols of pop-capitalism like Wayne Thiebaud – then sets them on fire. Her medium may have shifted radically, but the concept remains intact.

In addition to fine arts, Stein holds a degree in political science: “I’ve always enjoyed shifting my perspective, filling the role of a scientist one day, and the one of an artist the next. My first works were very conceptual – my objective never was to make money from my art.”

Ironically, that’s exactly what she’s doing now. She participated in countless international exhibitions, including the renowned Manifesta. Her works have been auctioned at Almine Rech, she is a fellow of the prestigious ISCP program in New York, represented Jorinde Voigt as a guest professor in Hamburg, and has taught around the world, including at CalArts, Pratt Institute, Berlin’s UdK, and elsewhere.

Stein’s work questions the status quo – body, gender, genre, perception, teciology, structure, desire, and hits the zeitgeist in the face. The Small Lovers evoke a sense of isolated intimacy in post-capitalist life. In her Melting Series, glossy black bodies dissolve, abstract forms lose definition, and contours blur. Slowly, insistently, she investigates what’s inside and out—what leaks, what hides, what needs protection.

With eyes wide open, Stein has blurred boundaries for years. Her portraits of humanoid robots – feminine, cyborg-like bodies – once dominated her work. They drove cars, got pregnant, claimed agency – and thoroughly unsettled viewers. When a person is painted, it’s a portrait. When an object is painted, it’s a still life. But what happens when the object looks human? Hans Bellmer or James Ensor might give a clear answer. Stein doesn’t. Her work is always somehow anthropomorphic. It’s intensely bodily – and at the same time acutely aware of what it means to have a body in late capitalism. Visibility becomes currency, identity becomes commodity, the self becomes brand.

And Stein herself? She’s part of the system, too: a product among products. Ultimate authenticity through maximal performance. The artist as cyber-Victorian painting queen.
But Charlie Stein wouldn’t be Charlie Stein if she stopped there. Like a Trojan horse, her art – saturated in sticky visual sweetness – slips into galleries, media, and the web. Her images are soft, shiny, touchable – and yet untouchable. You want to reach out, but the water isn’t wet. The more seductive the surface, the sharper the sting. The more erotic the subject, the more it hooks into our collectively male-coded gaze. Her figures stare back – whether through eyes or reflected light. Bodies between flesh and code, presence and representation.

“I’m obsessed with portraiture,” Stein says. “The idea that something flat can look back at you – it’s insane. I think I’m trying to build mirrors. Or funhouse mirrors.” The body as interface, as projection surface. Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto seems to haunt Stein’s studio like a digital ghost: Virtually Yours – the title of a recent group show curated by Anika Meier, borrowed from Stein herself.

In the liminal zones of Stein’s paintings – between canvas and screen, reality and projection, gaze and surface – friction builds. So does resistance. Like Issy Wood or Sun Yitian, Stein distorts the present through a world of sticky consumption, where every body, object, and idea can be bought. Her work participates – and pushes back. It refuses the swipe-and-go logic. It’s slow. Intentional.

“How do you make a painting that stays interesting over time?” she asks, blinking through thick lashes only she could pull off. “Only painting can really endure. We’ve learned to see it as a space of reflection. Like a valuable object behind glass. You want to touch it – but you can’t. So you contemplate it. Forever.”