the curve 2 – Stille (Silence)

As a sculptor, Stella Hamberg is an exceptional phenomenon in contemporary art – confidently taking up classical sculptural traditions while developing her own modern artistic signature. Her most comprehensive solo exhibition to date – Corpus – held at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, presented works from the years 2007 to 2021. In 2025, she was awarded the prestigious Robert Jacobsen Prize by the Würth Foundation.

“The history of sculpture is ever-present for us today,” says Stella Hamberg: “It is within this canon or against this backdrop that three-dimensional art is created today – everything is, in a way, also a reference, a continuation or even a redefinition.”

Hans (Jean) Arp is one of the sculptors who has influenced Stella Hamberg artistically. As a sculptor, draughtsman and graphic artist, his views are close to hers.

Since 2023, the curve 2 – Stille (Silence) has been permanently on view, in the immediate vicinity of Hans (Jean) Arp’s works, on the ground-floor terrace facing the Rhine in Richard Meier’s new building. The bronze entered the museum’s collection thanks to a purchase by the Society of Friends and Patrons of the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck.

The liveliness of this impressively massive abstract work from her curve series of sculptures is determined in part by its contours, which emerge like lines in a drawing and blend into each other, only to vanish again a moment later. According to Stella Hamberg, this is the result of dealing “with generic patterns, with physiological, topographical, geological structures, lines, frequencies and sequences in nature, with the growth of plants, the way leaves move in the wind, the way animals move – as something essential in the movement or appearance of things”. The curve sculptures resemble plant-animal hybrid creatures and appear to be undergoing a process of transformation. The animated, matt black surfaces of the finished bronzes visualise the artistic act of creation, retaining the unmistakable haptic traces left in the soft source materials, such as clay or plaster.

Its outdoor location at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck connects the sculpture with the textures of the sky and the changing light of the seasons. The bronze thus becomes part of the surrounding nature, seemingly freeing its shape from any kind of constraint.

Stella Hamberg (born 1975, lives and works in Brandenburg)
the curve 2 – Stille (Silence), 2015
Bronze
88 × 70 × 140 cm
Cast number: 1/3
Gift of the Society of Friends and Patrons of the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck (12.5.2023)