A Subversive Sensuality, Keiyona C. Stumpfs Sculpture (Lóránd Hegyi), in: GRIP OF NATURE, exhibitioncatalog, Galleria Antonella Villanova, 2024
In the context of the current debate on aesthetics, which uses ideological categories that tend to be at least in part associated with politics, rather simplistic, imprecisely conceptualized and narrowly defined (if they are defined at all), Keiyona C. Stumpf's approach is striking: her work reflects on the complexity of beauty, and on the creative principle that underlies natural phenomena. The matters she deals with, which at first, glance might seem naive or anachronistic, are tied to fundamentally authentic elements central to artistic, practice: reflections on the artist's creative ability to create and make new objects that are understood as objectivizations of specific messages, and that guide human orientations within the complex concrete realities she develops. The invention of new plastic/visual realms and the creation of previously inexistent forms are expressions of the artist's relationship with "her" perceived reality and they convey the sensibilities and orientations that allow her to interiorize and try to understand the world. All of this presupposes the artist's commitment to understanding and making us understand the beauty, or better, the special characteristics of her plastic-visual manifestations, the irresistible, poignant sensorial quality of the physical-material structure she has conceived and the connotations it triggers, and how her sculptures are entities that engage and influence our perceptions, sensibilities and imagination. In other words, a beauty that unfolds through interpretation of the complex, multi-layered, active artwork, and through interaction with a tangible, sensual structure that generates a vast range of connotations and an immense, endless reservoir of possible mental associations, thus creating an experience that is both sensory and intellectual.
The intellectual contextualization of sensory manifestations takes place simultaneously on several mental levels, drawing on connotations and allusions to associate the structure created by the artist with various cultural, psychological and emotional states and experiences. Contextualized in this way, the sensory experience opens up paths to a very free, subversive, unusual approach to artwork, untethered from conventional notions of beauty. This approach should absolutely not be understood as a beautification of reality, but rather a provocatory radical revelation of a principle of beauty that entails vitality, concentration, complexity and a constructive contradictonness - the objectivization of antagonisms that are amalgamated and coexist in true symbiosis.
The beauty of these antagonisms, these juxtapositions, can be perceived as excessive, provocatory odd and unsettling qualities, but also as engaging, moving and delightful. The intense, heightened, obsessive and sometimes even shocking sensuality that enlivens the multi-faceted physical-material expression of Stumpf's works reveals something rare and secret, something hidden that is usually kept in the shadows, something that appears to us only at extraordinary moments. We can take this singular message as a manifestation of a dynamic universe of improbabilities, that somehow does not appear completely foreign or obscure to us, even though we know nothing of its structures or the principles of its composition, which may sometimes seem eerie since we are unfamiliar with this world.
This uncertainty and lack of clarity, and this surprisingly intense, almost obsessive sensuality which can be perceived as both extreme beauty and provocatory chaos, trigger a feeling that we have lost, our reference points; still, the result is not total disorientation, but rather the sudden presence of an exasperating variety of possible orientations. An enchanted, poetic, sensual and seductive plastic world of sculpture is revealed to us, and despite the splendid beauty of its exotic forms, it instills a latent, silent uneasiness in our mind. After a first look, doubts or questions begin to arise more and more insistently about the peculiarity of these seductive, enthralling forms, multiplying and generating an overwhelming sense of uncertainty. Enigmatic, fuzzy; obscure spheres of our inner lives are revealed, spheres tied to the psyche and the imagination that, despite their bizarreness and singularity, materialize in forms that are natural, but that pertain to a different, sort of nature, completely unlike anything we have experienced before. Their vitality, their vegetative fertility their relentless verve is something we might associate with the inexhaustible energy of an unlimited material nature. At the same time, these expressions are bearers of a different, hidden, obscure, impenetrable nature made up of uncertainties.
Keiyona C. Stumpf's euphoric, inebriating sculptures offers the viewer a stirring, emotional encounter with highly provocatory forms. Their uncanny, wild beauty is both wondrous and disorienting, and sinks its roots into the depths of ambiguity. This is a beauty that alludes to unknown creative energies, and its inconceivability is unsettling and disorienting. It is an unusual, suggestive beauty so charged with sensuality that it cannot be the object of simple admiration, nor can it engender inner harmony and serenity. On the contrary, it titillates our imagination and leads us to perceive its extraordinary, stunning uniqueness as something normal. At the same time, it sparks curiosity and a desire to look more closely into its hidden, obscure, unknown aspects. In this sense, it acts rather like a seductive, irresistible fragrance that makes us want to inhale it more and more deeply, and from which it becomes increasingly difficult to break away. Our encounter with this strange, remarkable, yet disconcerting and frightening beauty opens the door to latent areas of the soul, gives access to other planes of experience, and reveals wide horizons and links with cultural, literary, and mythological narratives that, contextualize these concrete manifestations of it. And this is where the complexity of Keiyona C. Stumpf's work can truly be perceived. Her intention to underscore, with these sensual, provocatory, obsessive sculptures, the substantial ambiguity of existing realities in all their complexity .....
a complexity that is both stimulating and moving on one hand, and disconcerting and unsettling on the other by giving them unmistakably natural characteristics ties into a cultural contextualization of this ambiguity in which/through subtle allusions to various levels of meaning linked to individual perception and plastic forms, potential new connotations and different interpretations are expressed.
The artist's sculptural work is dominated by an exultant, obsessive sensuality. The specific ceramics technique she has developed over the past few years, following experimental installations and objects made from various textiles and other materials, lends her work an exceptionally intense sensuality that suggests associations with the organic sphere. The smooth, shiny surfaces recall soft bodies that sometimes seem like oceanic animals, creatures from the depths, sea snakes or pearlescent shells, or exotic, orchid-like plants. And, as in nature, where the spectacular beauty of plants and flowers can belie lethal properties, toxic vapors and deadly chemical processes, here we find hidden hints of potentially destructive, risky, aggressive aspects. This complex entanglement of pleasing and invigorating connotations lets us intuit profound mental associations with the literary, art history and cultural history spheres. Keiyona C. Stumpf's works are immersed in a state of unstoppable, dynamic transformation, a constant existential transfiguration of objects that seem simultaneously natural and artificial. The artist knowingly relativizes the distinction between natural, vegetative, biological generative processes and deliberated, man-made, artificial generative processes, thus evoking a fertility that all existing creatures have in common - an archetypical, inexhaustible, mythical fertility. The fluidity of things, the continuous emergence of never-before-seen formations, the unfolding of unexpected, exotic shapes - these are expressions of the power of a radical imagination, and also of how indistinct the categories and typologies we use to try to make sense of the dynamic, disorienting chaos of the world are. This constant metamorphosis of things, this total lack of stability is certainly freeing, and subversive, exciting, joyful and fulfilling, but it is also unsettling, disorienting and distressing, because we find ourselves suddenly and unwittingly thrust into the murkiness of uncertainty. And so, after the pleasantly playful sensation of lightness generated by this continuous process of transformation/ transfiguration and the inherent fluidity of these colorful, sensual, picturesque forms, we suddenly realize we are in the grip of powerful uncertainty and doubt.
Despite the doubt and bewilderment, and despite the fact that these continuously shifting shapes are unrecognizable, their sensual forms appear somehow familiar; part of a gigantic natural material universe in which extreme improbability determines the composition of every formation. This manifestation of improbability, of extreme fertility, of the transgressive, vegetative unfolding of new organic forms is the distinguishing feature of an enigmatic reality in which bizarre, fantastical, imaginary formations meld with natural, organic, known forms. The result is a tangible, identifiable, yet improbable, unrecognizable thing. In this organic universe laid out as something totally natural, figures pop up that to some degree recall architectural structures from art history ornamental fragments, or even elements from the vocabulary of baroque art. This eccentric ambiguity, this singular lack of demarcation between nature and artefact, brings to mind sensual, sensitive, fluid creatures, and Mannerist and Baroque art, while the metamorphosis or ongoing transfiguration of forms evokes a euphoric vitality and a general instability. When Hajo Schiff, in his insightful writing on the affinity of Keiyona C. Stumpf's art with the Baroque, describes these references from art history, he highlights the manneristic dissolution of form and the artists intentionally distorted interpretation of "works that look like natural forms". In reference to the historical-cultural aspects of the artist's work, he also underscores the great changes in the Weltanschauung during the era of Mannerism and the Baroque, and their impact on modes of representation: "The Renaissance grew into Mannerism, which loved metamorphoses; the corresponding anti-Platonic texts (e.g., Ovid's lyrical transformations, Epicurus' atomism) were read once more, and forms were broken up by ornaments and twisted lines (e.g., the Figura sepentinata). Behind rational, neo-ancient facades there were now wild, sprawling grottoes, some of them adorned with finds from nature; replicas of the grotesques discovered during the first excavations in and around Rome grew around archways as transitory forms of decoration, and in gardens, sites of natural mysticism emerged, situated between reminiscence and joy in the power of emulation." (1)
These figures, continuously "becoming," mutating their organic and inorganic characteristics, create a state of indefinability that blurs the boundaries between artefact and natural creature, between plant and animal, and that lets things fluctuate in a fluid condition. This disorienting uncertainty also influences the perception of these very sensual forms, which can sometimes even suggest sexual associations. Similarly admiring the beauty of structures that recall exotic tropical flowers implies an awareness of their potential lethality, as they might also be capable of killing insects and other living creatures with their toxic vapors/Their beauty becomes a lethal weapon; their seductive magnetism acts as a dangerous trap. Destructiveness, aggressivity and dangerousness merge with boundless fertility and amplified sensuality. Fear and wonder alternate continuously; the attractive exterior disguises an instrument of death. There is also a latent inducement to read this contradiction on a metaphorical level, and to relativize, through a subversive intellectual approach, spontaneous admiration of sensual beauty to reveal an ambiguous reality.
A creative, spontaneous, fertile energy is combined with a refined intellectuality, thus raising questions about the idea of the apparent limitlessness of an enthralling, seductive sensuality and the ingenuousness and innocence that seem to characterize admiration for beauty. Contextualizing a sensuous object that seems at first glance to have no particular complexities activates spheres of the mind that suggest different ways of reading it. And this cultural contextualization lends even greater impact to the work of Keiyona C. Stumpf who, working mindfully with references from art history, lends value to the structure of meaning in her pieces, creating new mental associations and connotations. In addition to elements that allude to the disintegration of form and the fluidity of mannerist art, or to the universal drama of a type of baroque art dominated by mythological forces, we also find analogies with the representative models of sculpture in Lucio Fontana's "baroque" sculptures from the 1940s. Starting in the early '40s, Fontana created figurative ceramic sculptures that combine the specific mysticism of Latin American baroque with avant-garde concepts of vitality, expansionism, "spatiality" ("spatial sculptures") and dynamism. In these figurative sculptures, which are de-compositions of the human figure taken to extremes, placed in a spatial dynamic and thus set in motion, Fontana sought to make explicit the expansion and dilation of masses in the surrounding space as a dramatic act, a rereading of the space in which the boundaries between "empty space" and full "solid mass" are relativized or broken down. These figures have a strange fluidity, in which the hysterical, expressive, sensual intensity of indistinct, dynamically dissolved human forms brings about a reinterpretation of the sculptural representation, and the sculptures take on the role of unspecified organic natural formations, like plants. In his book on Fontana, Jole de Sanna, referring to the artist's sculptures from that period, speaks of baroque mysticism, in which the exalted mysticism of the Jesuit tradition is mixed with expansionist avant-garde ideas. Jole de Sanna cites an article from "El Mundo" on Fontana's sculptures: "The jittery, tormented forms seem to express their most secret impulses, in a pathos that creates a sensation of gasping unease... The theme speaks through the materials and the plastic vibration, not through descriptive or anecdotal descriptions." (2)
The article underlines the ecstatic, excessive, pathos-laden character of Fontana's "baroque sculptures" and explains the link between baroque mysticism and avant-garde expansionism. A particularly relevant key to understanding Keiyona C. Stumpf's sculptures is the reference to the complexity of content, which arises from the connection between the extreme sensuality of their material and the mystical, obscure implausibility of their formal language. In her work, we can identify some aspects of Fontana's plastic vibration and the secret impulses of his "tormented forms," although Fontana, of course, used this plastic vibration and accentuated dynamism in the context of his own historical period of expansionism and avant-gardes, while Stumpf today focuses more on emotional complexity and subtlety, ambiguity and the unrecognizability of inner being. Anthony White wrote of Fontana's artistic intention, which determined the style of his "baroque sculptures": he suggested that in the context of Fontana's oeuvre, these works bridge the divide between the materiality of the object and the surrounding space, which is why Fontana entitled the series "Spatial ceramics" and used reflective enamel surfaces. White asserted that while Fontana did not believe it was possible to create weightless or formless artworks that blurred the boundaries with the space, nor sculptures that emphasized materiality alone, these very dynamic pieces with their lively reflections were his attempt to amalgamate those two aims. (3)
The relativization, or rather, the visual disintegration of the boundaries between aggressively expanding solid masses in "active" movement and the "empty," "passive" space around them generates - as Anthony White writes - a fundamentally open constellation in which the sculpture is placed in the space as part of the space, an integral part of a dynamic spatial context that continuously redefines and re-concretizes itself. Keiyona C. Stumpf's ceramic sculptures work with similar effects: their glossy, reflective surfaces and the plastic vibration of the disintegrated forms relativize and blur the boundaries between material solid masses and the surrounding "empty" space. This virtual dissolution of physical masses and materials opens the way to limitless new paths for spatial imagination, which in turn enhances the structure of meaning with vast associative possibilities, sparking poetic narratives.
With extraordinary insight, the artist recognizes the ambiguity with which we perceive this beauty, capable of inspiring and perturbing us because it is tied to the most profound and consequential spiritual orientations and existential sensations. "Being touched by a special kind of beauty in nature may awaken a deep longing within us. Fear of the unknown or a threat could indicate a deeper fear within us - maybe a fear that, if traced back to its roots, would ultimately be a fear of a much greater beauty demolishing all familiar categorizations?" (4) Here we can observe a central element of Stumpf's artistic experimentation: the artist reflects on how to go beyond the customary sort of perception of a "beautiful shape," a perception legitimized by conventional categorization, and one that remains stuck in the sphere of a traditional aesthetic definition and evaluation of beauty Instead, an intense network of obsessive, dazzling connotations - dynamism, complexity, sensuality (which can be captivating or repugnant), harmony and demoniacal aggression - interwoven into a multifaceted narrative of cultural allusions, give rise to an extremely dense structure of meaning within which references to art history can be activated and actualized. Perhaps this layering of primary plastic-visual entities and subtle nods to art history enriches Keiyona C. Stumpf's work in a completely unique way; it also reveals a fruitful symbiosis between unbounded imagination and the cultural contextualization of plastic means of expression.
The extravagant, provocatory nature of the sensual and physical aspects of her method of representation generates a subversive, liberating, anarchical-creative energy that obliterates the apparent seductive attractiveness of a world of simulacres that is, in reality, empty, insignificant, superficial and manipulated, making the banal spectacularism of that real world seem absurd, and intensifying vital historical-cultural and anthropological interconnections between artistic narratives. This dense, complex cultural contextualization of structures generated by an unfettered imagination visualizes latent ties between concrete, current individual experiences and historical, mythological, metaphorical mental narratives that convey archetypal models linked to schools of thought, hierarchies, community organizations and value systems. Perhaps this unsettling and profoundly distressing uncertainty is what triggers the emergence of forms representing an obscure world of inexplicable, impenetrable events that seem to denote a fatal agnosticism. In this imaginary world, uncertainty, enigma and inexplicableness are lent beautiful, intelligible, radiantly sensual form, a tangible image, a palpable, sensory expression that brings deep, invisible or obscure dimensions of existence to light. In this respect, Keiyona C. Stumpf's work is noteworthy for its marked potency and intransigence, its severity and its radicality, although all of this is in part hidden behind the seductive and sensual facade of the beautiful form. With inventive audacity and unconventional courage, the artist radically questions the traditional concepts, or better the "comfort zone" within which the conventional world customarily deals with the fine arts. In doing so, she manages not only to maintain the joyful, delightful, sensual wonder of her work, but even to intensify it, conceptualizing and integrating it through intellectual contextualization into the complex total process of human perception.
Notes
1. Hajo Schiff: Wachsen, Wandel, Weiterungen In: Keiyona C. Stumpf: Natura Naturans, exhibition catalogue, Galerie-Hengevoss-Dürkop, Galeriehaus Hamburg, Hamburg 202, p. 3
2. Jole de Sana: Lucio Fontana - Materie Raum Konzept, Ritter Verlag Klagenfurt 199 S, p. 93
3. Anthony White: Lucio Fontana - Between Utopia and Kitsch OCTOBER Books The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts London, UK, 2011, p. 141
4. Keiyona C. Stumpf: Die Schönheit des Lebendigen In: Keiyona C. Stumpf: Mutual, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Gedok, Munich 2017, p.111