Stefan Kumpfmüller

Artistic concept and working method

My artistic identity is based on conceptual art. I created my first concepts to transform text into abstract art in when I was young. At that time I knew nothing about conceptual art. After visiting a reconstruction of Mel Bochner's exhibition ‘Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art’ at Haus der Kunst in 2013, I realised that this approach corresponded to my artistic approach.

My work is often about translating text into visual works. I develop sets of rules that relate the numerical occurrence of individual letters to other numerical values in the text or work and use these to create values for the number-based logic of the RGB colour space. The text can disappear completely or be inoculated with information from other works. The only difference is that it is no longer materials that are linked together, but information.

Even if the works are usually realised digitally, they are not created by computer programmes. No programming facilitates the creation of the works; they are created by hand on the computer. Programming would speed up the creation process, but it would exclude me as an artist from the creative process. However, I am not interested in the reproducibility of an applied set of rules in other environments. What is more exciting is experiencing the application of the set of rules during the often very time-consuming realisation (in the end, for example, a good 155,000 lines of text will have been covered manually in more than 33,000 tiles for the Shakespeare project, and 998 letters were connected with 33,853 lines for ‘’Twenty-seven Senses‘’). The realisation of a single work of Shakespeare's plays takes between 30 and 40 working hours.

I love implementing rules. But in the end, the conclusion of young Kurt Schwitters remains: ‘All art wants to please.’ (from ‘The problem of abstract art (first attempt)’ 1910)

Future, goals and dreams

Exhibition

After completing all the abstractions of the Shakespeare plays, I am planning an exhibition in Munich with all 38 works.

Shop

I am planning to set up a sales platform for my works in 2025.

Representation Gallery

Professional input is always a valued factor in any professional activity. Although I started late to pursue my artistic path professionally and full-time, I am convinced that the works can stand on their own and so I would like to associate myself with professionals for their promotion.

Artistic activity

2024 - ... (full-time artist)

Full-time freelance artist since February 2024.

new concepts

• Happy Birthday GG
  Concept for the presentation of the development of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 2024

realised concepts

• Georg Büchner transcribed
• Boris Vian at zweitausendeins

continued concepts

• William Shakespeare's Plays
• War in Ukraine
• ISBN-Maschine

2017-2023 (part-time artist)

In the years from 2017 onwards, I developed my artistic future.

• ISBN-Maschine
  Idea developed in 2017, implemented in early 2018, the first of my artworks with a set of rules for converting text into colour.
• Abstraction
  2018: Visual realisation of the digital ISBN machine in visual art
• Konzeptkunst online
  After I decided in 2019 to end my career in 2024, I conceived konzeptkunst-online in June 2019 and realised it in early 2022. This is the home for my current artistic work.
• Virginia Ouse
  An idea from 2020 realised in 2021 as a gift for my brother Michael Kumpfmüller's 60th birthday. The fusion of the colour information of a photograph with the text of a complete novel.
• War in Ukraine
  2022: pictorial representation of the reception of the war in Ukraine in the news programme Tagesschau.
• William Shakespeare's Plays
  2023: Concept for the abstraction of William Shakespeare's 38 dramas through a completely text-immanent set of rules for translating the text into visual language
• Georg Büchner Plays
  2023: Concept for the rule-based transcription of Georg Büchner's dramas in pencil
• Atheist Peace Plan
  2023: digitally edited map

1986 - 2016 (occasional paintings)

red, green, blue

In the summer of 2013, I visited the exhibition "Mel Bochner: When the Colour Changes"1 . Here, the first exhibition of conceptual art "Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art"2 was re-enacted in New York in 1966. I was happy and understood for the first time what my brain was always thinking of: conceptual art.

Life

Childhood and youth

I was born in Munich in 1964. For me, my parents moved from Munich-Haidhausen to Lohhof.3

I did not like going to kindergarten, but then I had to go to primary school and made it to grammar school, which was luckily in Garching. I liked it better in Garching than in Lohhof.

Kropotkin

I am a child of the 80s. In the early 80s, I discovered anarchism for myself in the Adalbert 14 bookshop in Munich. I was particularly taken with Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin4 and his work "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution"5 6 is a foundation of my view of humanity to this day.

Joe Strummer

With some delay, punk also came to Lohhof in 1980. Thomas Gottschalk had already done a special programme on "Pop nach 8" in 1977, but my brother convinced me that it was not music. Therefore, I listened to Sailor and the Wombles for a few more years until the first punk albums changed my life in 1980 with Stiff Little Fingers' "Nobody's Heroes" and The Clash's "London Calling". Joe Strummer7 became a great source of inspiration. Joe Strummer is credited with the quote "Thinking is what gets me out of bed in the mornings." The Clash were the band that realised early on that punk was not just about attacking the crusty rock establishment, but creating something new. The basis was, if you want to do it, do it.

Kurt Schwitters

I encountered Dadaism through punk. Like Punk, Dadaism was initially about tearing down established art forms, which always gets boring quickly. This was the reason for my enthusiasm for Kurt Schwitters8 . What excited me about Schwitters is his approach that art arises from valuation. What a liberation! He wrote: "What the material used meant before its use in the work of art is indifferent if it has only received its meaning in the work of art through valuation. [...] Through valuation against each other, they lose their individual character, their inherent poison, are dematerialised and are material for the picture."9 "It is only important in the work of art that all parts relate to each other, are valued against each other."

So I wrote my subject paper on Schwitters and in it, I tried to prove that Kurt Schwitters was not a Dadaist, but the opposite, as he created his own art form.10

I was completely surprised by the end of my school days. However, I now had my Abitur.

Career dreams

After school, I would have liked to go to an art academy, but no one but me was really interested in that. Alternatives that combined this dream with a solid professional education were rejected by my parents as being in the way of my moving out of my parents' semi-detached house. So I moved out and moved to Munich.

Here I did a commercial apprenticeship and later turned my temporary job into my main job. The main job turned into a company shareholding. The prediction that starting a company would lead to a loss of friends did not come true; instead, I married my best friend after 15 years of rehearsal.

I could also put my love of rules to good use in the company. Some people were not always as enthusiastic.

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• Development of the artist : Stefan Kumpfmüller
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