Doubts on the home front

His art has changed noticeably since the now 46-year-old sprayed his first graffiti in his hometown of Offenburg in the 1990s, bringing him into conflict with the authorities. After this ‘illegal’ early phase, Stefan Strumbel very successfully shifted his focus to the theme of home and pop-style cuckoo clocks, which he sometimes distorted with skulls, M16 assault rifles and grenades, and sometimes less martial with guitars, tattoo motifs and hearts. The theme struck a chord during the fast-paced era of globalisation. However, Strumbel did not want people to be able to buy a piece of home with one of his garish objects. On the contrary, he wanted to point out that home always has something to do with exclusion.

Gradually, sculptures of Mary wrapped in bubble wrap and canvases cast in aluminium were added to the collection. The inspiration came from pop and street art, but also from Jeff Koons, JR, Blek le Rat, Banksy and Damien Hirst. In 2010, the New York Times reported on Strumbel. A year later, he redesigned the interior of the Catholic church ‘Maria, Hilfe der Christen’ (Mary, Help of Christians) in the Kehl district of Goldscheuer, which was threatened with demolition and, thanks to his intervention, was preserved as a place of dialogue. At the centre of the redesign was a six-metre-high Madonna in Hanau traditional costume with the baby Jesus. It was installed on a gallery above the entrance area and combined regional symbolism with Christian iconography. Strumbel placed comic speech bubbles above the candlesticks, thus opening up the religious space to contemporary forms of communication.

He took a similarly forward-looking approach in a joint project with the organisation ‘Youth Against AIDS’, when he used ‘likes’ on a Facebook page to make a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears live. She cried on behalf of those affected by the Catholic Church's strict condom policy. At some point, Karl Lagerfeld and Hubert Burda came out as buyers of his Black Forest pop art. Since then, he has been collecting official enquiries instead of complaints about damage to property. Whether it was for the Stuttgart Opera, which commissioned him to design the stage set for Andrea Moses' production of Puccini's opera ‘La Bohème’, or for the 300th anniversary of the city of Karlsruhe, which resulted in an order for a bronze sculpture from the House of Baden.

It was designed in the shape of an upholstered chair that stood on a tree stump instead of legs, and anyone could sit on it. By scanning a QR code on the monument, smartphone users could also learn about Karl Wilhelm and the founding of the city. Strumbel now focuses on bronze as a material, often in the form of foxes, squirrels and owls, and is represented by the Ruttkowski;68 gallery with locations in Cologne, Düsseldorf, New York, Paris and Bochum. For the entrance to ART COLOGNE, he chose a sculpture of an eagle, which traditionally stands for strength, authority and national power.

Strumbel's eagle hides its face with its right wing, as if it were ashamed and felt no pride whatsoever. Does it feel shame about history? Does it mourn the state of the present? The fact that it stands on the cone of an old cuckoo clock identifies it as representative of the universe typical of its creator. A symbol of tradition and the passing of time, but also of ‘repetition, mechanics and the unwinding of history without really reflecting on it,’ as Strumbel says. In doing so, he questions a symbol ‘that has often been misused for national glorification – especially by the right wing.’ His eagle is an ‘image of doubt. Of memory. Of responsibility.’