West Berkshire sculptor plays with light amid university cloisters in prestigious festival show

This summer, Oxford Festival of the Arts is presenting the stunning exhibition Lightshadow at New College, with work by West Berkshire sculptor Johannes von Stumm comprised of abstract glass, stone and metal compositions. Oxfordshire Artweeks director ESTHER LAFFERTY meets the artist

UNTIL August 27, the Cloisters of New College, Oxford, house Lightshadow, a new sculpture exhibition by West Berkshire artist Johannes von Stumm from South Fawley. You may be familiar with his work; Couple in Conversationstands tall on the Robin Hood Roundabout gateway to Newbury.

Visitors can access the Cloisters from 10am – 5pm, every day (last entry 4.30pm) for the exhibition which is in collaboration with Oxford Festival of the Arts.

Esther Lafferty writes:

“Von Stumm grew up in Munich making 3D objects in the cellar of his parents’ house during the long winters and it was on a school trip to Paris as a teenager that he first really encountered sculpture and was transfixed.

At college however, his life drawing tutor dissuaded him from planning a career as a sculptor, warning him of the grim realities of being an artist: no money, a disillusioned family and a rusty old car. Von Stumm took this advice and went to university to read law and politics, the ‘sensible choice’, but explains that the lure of being a creative was too great - deep inside he wished to live as a sculptor.

And so, undeterred by the advice of art professionals who warned him against his chosen route, von Stumm followed his instincts, ”And then even when I was studying fine art, the professor told me that granite and glass were an impossible alliance which would never work. However, I had grown up in the Alps, where water, stone and wood are seen together in beautiful natural combinations so this was an irresistible challenge for me. I was also intrigued by how age-old materials speak to the soul and wanted to capture that in my sculpture. I persevered and experimented, and after several years and a lot of broken glass I finally developed a way of joining the opposing forces of the different materials in an inseparable and interdependent form as a carpenter might join two pieces of wood.

In the combination of very different and apparently contradictory materials, each of Johannes’ sculptures represents both the fragility and strength of life; the solid and the liquid, the dark and the transparent, all meshed together perfectly to form harmonious static entities with a fluidity and dynamism.

From the first, von Stumm’s extraordinary combinations of iron, granite and glass attracted public and critical acclaim: he has exhibited across Europe, Asia and America and was, for several years, President of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. He is also a founding member of Sculpture Network (Europe).

More recently, the human figure, Grace, in bronze and glass led to Johannes to develop a series of Immaterial Figures in which he replaces glass - a technically limiting material - with space, filling his new figures with sun and stars, rain, hail and snow.

Michelle Castelletti, director of Oxford Festival of the Arts comments: “In 40 years of combining metal with glass and stone Johannes von Stumm has fused the light and the dark, the solid and the liquid, the opaque and the transparent, our strength and our fragility into incantations of a delicate balance. His Immaterial Figures are filled with light and darkness once again - the emptiness of the human form allowing it to be permeated by the whole universe around it. Emptiness becomes Fullness.”

She adds: “Six years ago, I encountered Johannes’ work for the first time at an Oxfordshire Artweeks talk in St Barnabas Church in Jericho. Seeing his work for real, I fell in love with the interplay of light and glass, and the combination of material, and I knew then I had to exhibit his sculpture as part of the Oxford Festival of the Arts.”

Eighteen months ago Michelle went to speak to Revd Dr Erica Longfellow, the Dean of Divinity at New College Oxford. “There was nowhere else I could envisage this glorious interlacing of stone and glass and metal and space - the immateriality of light.

It would not work in quite the same way anywhere else. The light through the cloisters and its playfulness with the glass, the colour of the stone, the spirituality and spatiality of the place, the timelessness, the textures - all working harmoniously with the glass, the granite, the limestone, the steel… the then and the now.

As director of Oxford Festival of the Arts and as a proud alumna of New College, I could not be more delighted, or more thankful. I hope that all our visitors will feel the beauty of this coalescence as it comes together in New College… Even the shape of the sculptures sometimes mirror that of the ancient archways in unexpected ways. It’s really rather magical. I cannot thank Oxfordshire Artweeks enough for introducing me to Johannes and his work in the first place.”

Adults £8 | Concessions £7 | Combination ticket (2 adults and up to 3 children aged 7 or over) £25

Wednesday, July 10: Free open day for the general public.

https://artsfestivaloxford.org

Please also check at https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/plannedclosures https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/planned-closures for planned college closures before visiting.