Sorcha Dallas

Michael Stumpf’s sculptures and installations are concocted from spliced together moments where a combination of images, objects and materials are shifted from their original contexts and relocated within a new imagined narrative. These hybrid elements become an anthology of dislocated referents, each element functioning as part of a persistently elusive whole which, like a frozen frame in a movie or a torn out page in a book, offers the viewer a partial glimpse, a displaced scene, a snapshot of a larger scenario.(1)

‘When we slow down’, said the drummer to the others, quietly practicing her beat. (2)

Following on from ‘Once’, Michael Stumpf’s first exhibition at Sorcha Dallas Gallery (2005), ‘Glöckchen Whiplash’ (3), features new sculptural works produced at both The Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden Aberdeenshire, and the artist’s studio in Glasgow. Made from bronze, denim, aluminium, jersey, acrylic resin and found objects the works draw from wide cultural associations and the intrinsic properties of these substances. Three-dimensional text works are shown alongside a group of sculptures suggesting a narrative in which sculptural language and its materials take on a life of their own. Suspended, freestanding and supported by the fabric of the gallery the display of the works evokes a tale of noise, velocity and heavy weather, where a song’s chorus fades: the woods are angry dark and deep is it light where you are yet.

1. text excerpt by Ruth Claxton and Gavin Wade (2005) for IPS/Birmingham.
2. F. Bugvale, Battery.
3. Little Bell Whiplash [annot. translator].

There will be a limited edition poster publication available during the exhibition

Born in Mannheim, Germany in 1969, Stumpf gained a Diploma from the State Academy of Fine Art, Karlsruhe (2001) and an MFA from Glasgow School of Art (2004). He served as a committee member of Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, and was co-founder and curator of kaiserpassage, Karlsruhe. Recent exhibitions include the State Academy of Fine Art, Karlsruhe, The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, east International, Norwich, Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago and Spectacle Gallery, Birmingham. Stumpf lives and works in Glasgow.

Private View, Friday 30th May 2008, 7-9pm Until 5th June 2008

Gallery Hours, Tuesday-Saturday 11am-5pm and by appointment