Ali Eckert is a German-American artist whose practice explores the imagery and iconography of American culture through a distinctive combination of photography and painting. Having grown up between two cultures, Eckert draws on the visual language of Americana, incorporating familiar objects, signs, and symbols that reflect both nostalgia and cultural transition. His works often focus on worn or fading subjects—crushed packaging, abandoned gas pumps, weathered signage, and fragments of the built environment—capturing the tension between preservation and disappearance.
Central to Eckert’s practice is an experimental analogue process that merges photography with painting. Drawing on his background as a photographer, he manually transfers pigments onto canvas, aluminium, paper, or wood, creating surfaces that retain a tactile, handmade quality. Wet pigments are squeezed, wiped, and reshaped, often combined with acrylic paint to produce compositions that hover between image and abstraction. Through this process, Eckert transforms everyday American imagery into layered works that are at once cinematic, painterly, and deeply evocative.
Born in Germany, Eckert lives and works between Berlin and Wisconsin, where he continues to work across mixed media, film, and photography.