Sebastian Stumpf

Certain Peaks

The gap in Rome always separates us from eternity and reconnects us to it. It is found in the layering of times, which equals the dizzying movements that have followed one another—historical, artistic, religious, and migratory movements—and from a past lost within modern society.
The pleasure is to find that classical interval and that light within the folds. The light penetrates the interstices, making them inherently poetic.
The gap is evident in Rome's complex traffic system expression, highlighting the spaces taken from nature and community by production systems and consumerist logic. So these untouched spaces, where something new emerges, represent both the ancient monochrome ruins of white marble and the wild spaces, in which urbanity and natural landscape cannot coexist, leading to what we now recognise modern punk ruins.
Rome is full of gaps because its ground is never flat, at every spot it is full of holes, bumps, and inclinations that make the passage in some way a performance.

In David Markson’s novel “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” the main character moves into an apocalyptic world where there are no more inhabitants but only things that are no longer used and hence are just scrap. Those things have become only denominations of a thing, framed in an abstract category and of a productive series that limits the possibility of finding another meaning outside of it. The figure that Stumpf portrays in the landscape seems to wander through an unsettling scenario. While the background is familiar, the overall experience feels unsettling.

The positions and movements that Sebastian Stumpf performs are free and precise movements that work on tension on one side and on the trespassing, hence on the imagination, aimed at the public in which his work sets. In this way, the artist's gesture is a sample of a possible way of experiencing the landscape and reality, which is neither humorous nor punk, but which tends to overcome mental boundaries. His performances unveil the illusion of those limits, the vertigo that leads to a possible upheaval. 
Claim the space to eventually give it back through a conceptual performance in the environment. It is this exploration of possibility that adds value, evident in the clear connection between the performance and the camera.What counts is the potential and the gesture forcefulness, the intent of doing and observing it.

The gestures and actions performed reflect the unique nature of a moment, capturing a suspension of thoughts in space. The upheaval and the new balance between fullness and emptiness, as well as between stasis and movement, are significant in reaching certain peaks. Stumpf's performance in the institutional and gallery spaces configures the space as a ‘white space’, a space for the emergence of a new paradigm, while the ‘white cube’ is a space undergoing a continuous change. They take beyond a given space towards one in which the outbreak of a gesture is conceivable. In the air, whether lying down or standing upright, Sebastian Stumpf stances a question to the space, creating a new relationship with the environment.

This framework highlights artistic research that emphasizes the landscape, the centrality of the body, and the concept of errant thought.
Deleuze discerns the “mental” body idea as a zone of experimentation and expression starting from unconscious forces, from that objectified body that is overlapped with desire.
Stumpf's performances, which express the body in a uniquely indefinable way within the landscape, serve as a primary example (mental body). They alter every prevailing point of reference concerning nature.

Refreshing the practice of subjective authorial photography - the one of Timm Rautert with whom he studied and, Otto Steinert with whom Rautert trained - they explore the idea of subjective action, a radical action, in the landscape and objectifying the subjectivity. 
In this case, it’s about introducing the potentially disruptive subjectivity in the relationship with the environment, understood as order.
At the same time, Sebastian Stumpf’s practice differs from the heroic styles of Yves Klein and Bas Jan Ader, outlined instead from an anti-heroic nature rooted in the choice of execution methods and spaces he occupies.
Through these settings, the body manifests a mental state by occupying and transiting in empty, ephemeral, immaterial and temporary spaces.
“Certain peaks” are both these “white spaces”, and either the repeated action attempts, the disruptions and variations, the state of equilibrium beyond tension and the gaps and transitions in the environment (“Transitions #1”, “Ocean”).
The real and surreal image created by Stumpf poses a further parallel with Magritte’s painting for questioning the viewer’s expectations regarding representation and reality through the introduction of contradictory elements aimed to let one ponder on perception, which brought Magritte the name “anti-painter”.
In this regard, anti-heroism is the sign of a deed wanting to give both proof of conventionality and an unorthodox perception.
In the same way, we see suspended figures in the sky or with an apple in front of their faces in Magritte's paintings, we see Stumpf's suspended background silhouette, in the Californian landscapes of “Fences”, in the skies, between the gaps of Tokyo's architecture (“Sukima”) and in those mirrored in the ocean vastity (“Ocean”).
If Magritte subverted traditional expectations of reality in paintings, Stumpf does so in performance and photography.
In the baffling imagined reality in “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” by Markson, the protagonist performs ironic actions bordering the impossible, prompting us to question if those same actions were performed in front of the public.
Stumpf's analyses also address this aspect in understanding the overall process of reality. The people who happen to witness the actions as he disappears behind a column (“Columns”), climbs a tree (“Trees”), throws himself off a bridge (“Bridges”) or throws himself under a shutter that is closing (“Tiefgaragen”) involuntarily states the meaning of the action as being part of the performance as if they were ultimately part of the surrounding flow. The significance of Sebastian Stumpf’s performance lies in the distinct perception of a place, a situation, and a world. What he shows us is the possibility of what it could be.
During the performance, the spectator is absent or casual. However, in the photographs and videos, the perspective is turned over to a more aware observer. 
Meditation as a consistent practice involves moving through and beyond the "white spaces," viewed as a repeated and nomadic action.
The anti-dramatic or anti-monumental gesture reveals actually, the presence of another form of heroism that does not draw inspiration from great deeds or significant pieces of History but to a performance from oneself and for everyone.

Text by Mario Iannelli