Stella Hamberg

STELLA HAMBERG

WATCHING AND BEING WATCHED

Stella Hamberg’s sculptures face us like autonomous people taken out of a story. The realistic and fictitious characters form a direct contact with the viewer and appear like images of today’s hybrid and composite identities.

Tatú – for no reason, 2004

Description
The sculpture portrays an Oriental looking person standing upright with his arms folded tightly around his body, looking straight ahead. His body is small and slight, dressed in a yellow floor-length kimono. His hair is black and smooth, the face painted with bright red makeup of the type used in traditional Chinese operas.

The sculpture’s body and face are created with two different materials and techniques. The body bears visible traces of the rough treatment of the material. The chalky white face is completely smooth-polished and appears with detailed and realistically painted features.

About the work
Stella Hamberg’s sculpture is balanced between reality and fiction. The figure is realistic with regards to both size and characterisation yet it contains obvious fictitious elements too. It speaks directly to the viewer’s empathy and physical presence but at the same time one never doubts the fact that it is merely a sculpture.
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About Hamberg’s art in general
Stella Hamberg’s sculptures often depict composite figures in transitional phases: Between past and present, between male and female, between child and adult, and between different cultures.

Her figures appeal very directly to the viewer’s imagination and empathy rather than symbolising a complicated theoretical idea. Unlike conceptual art Stella Hamberg seeks an immediate and sensuous effect in her sculptures: “Art should not be informative – it is not speech or language. Rather, art is an atmosphere, a scent, mood or temperature that can speak to you in a different manner.”
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Literature
"Full House – Gesichter einer Sammlung", Kunsthalle Mannheim, 2006
"Reviews Berlin – Stella Hamberg" (Adina Popescu) in Flash Art no. 243, July-Sept. 2005, p. 130
"SANS MIG!" (Charlotte Præstegaard Schwartz and Camma Juel Jepsen) in klubARKEN magazine, no. 15, 2005