This 30th September marks the inauguration at Galleria Antonella Villanova of the exhibition by Keiyona C. Stumpf. The show is an installation of ceramics and porcelain works created by the German artist between 2017 and 2023.
Keiyona C. Stumpf is concerned with a reflection on nature and approaches this comprehensively. It is not about a meticulously detailed representation of an apprehended phenomenon. What has been seen serves as a point of entry to penetrated into depths of organic processes and structures. The complex systems fundamental to living things fascinate her, whether as the interaction of the organs in a (human) body or the idiosyncratic rationality of a fungal mycelium. In our contemporary world of hygiene and desinfection, the supposed chaos of the natural growth an decay is thought of with aesthetic reservations and often calls forth revulsion and disgust. This is one reason Stumpf´s works and installations disconcert at first sight. Yet at the same time, distress becomes fascination and the deeper the involvement with one of her works, the more the beauty develops. And this is what the artist is principally concerned with, as she puts it herself: “The infinite repertoire of phenomena in nature contains vast beauty and complexity which can be traced down to the smallest detail. I have always admired this profoundly, accompanied by the question of which creative principle lends all these phenomena their ultimate form and makes them grow in their aliveness and then decay. Even forms that may cause a sense of revulsion or even fear may reveal their beauty to the eye on closer examination.”
