Opening: 20.01.2017, 7 PM

Introduction: Dr. Ralf Christofori

Exhibitiondates: 21.01.2017–18.03.2017

The exhibition is a collaboration with Vienna based gallery baeckerstrasse4.
The opening in Vienna will take place on the 25th of January 2017.  

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

press announcement

Henk Stallinga, Light Sinn

Gallery Michael Sturm is thrilled to announce the first solo exhibition by Dutch artist Henk Stallinga.

Henk Stallinga was born in 1962 and graduated from Rietveld Academy Amsterdam in 1993. That same year was also the founding year of his design studio. Nevertheless he has kept strong ties to the arts. His works are reminiscent of the neoplasticism of dutch art group De Stijl just as american Minimal Art.

Dark hearted is constituted of fluorescent rings, which float in front of a black monochrome background. The rings are interlinked. Some segments are covered in black sleeves, which together create an inner black center. The lighting intensity of the pure fluorescent rings alters, thus giving a pulsating quality to this „dark heart“.

There’s something different going on in the installation Lumens. Its basic elements are slightly curved slim LED-fluorescent tubes. Three at a time form a balanced mobile. The light tubes are hanging from the ceiling on thin cables, some head high, some a little lower. They overhang and change their horizontal position in space due to air movements. Alone or as a group they become this emergent structure, which is changing constantly and which is at the same time claiming a relation among visitors and the objects sharing the same space.

It is easy to see the described works in context with the light sculptures of Dan Flavin. The materiality of the fluorescent light tubes urges one to do so. But neither for Dan Flavin nor for Henk Stallinga materiality leads to an end in itself. For both the arrangement becomes relevant only where it materializes: in space, in its perception, in movement, in the air and on the walls, between the artwork and the recipient.

This greater connection is essential to put the works by Henk Stallinga in context and to come to grasp with them. Even then, if – as it is the case in the work Waiting in the Hallway – he works with tangible steel. It would be fatal to confuse the simplicity of form with the simplicity of perception. This was already important to Robert Morris. One should beware of it in the case of Henk Stallinga just as well. He is concerned with a greater all encompassing perception, which is released by a rather simple form and its complex relation to space, the recipient, to movement, air and the surrounding walls. All are equally involved in the process of perception.