WOLF LAMPE

BACKGROUND

Forty-five years ago, I visited the Ulla River for the first time. I had travelled to Santiago with my best friend in August to attend Spanish classes at the university. We quickly established a routine: breakfast at the bar around the corner, then practicing irregular verbs until midday and in the afternoon, we went to the river. We parked our motorcycles next to the old Pontevea bridge and hiked upstream along an almost overgrown path on the left bank of the Ulla to the ruins of a watermill. The Ulla flows narrow, deep, and swiftly between the old wall and the opposite bank. Sand has accumulated in towel-sized patches between the large stones. We usually had the place to ourselves; sometimes, a fisherman would be standing in the rapids further upstream.

When we later returned to Santiago and slowly began to learn some Spanish, we would spend hours by the river on warm summer days, even though the water was almost too cold to jump in voluntarily. Those days in Galicia, and especially those afternoons by the Ulla River, were times when I felt truly at peace in the world.

I was born in 1956 and have been working on sculptures and objects since my youth. After finishing school, I had two excellent teachers. First, Herbert Belau—sculptor, graphic artist, and painter – himself a student of Ewald Mataré and a friend of Joseph Beuys. During this period, I worked primarily with wood. Decades later, through Stefan Saxen, a stonemason and sculptor from Bremen, I added stone sculpture to my repertoire. Through my work on traditional sailing ships and merchant vessels, I had already discovered rope as an important material for my work. For the exhibition at Braulio Vilariño’s art gallery “Minotauro” in 1995 – one of the few exceptions where I publicly displayed objects – I created installations made of wooden frameworks covered with Japanese paper.

I decided early on to make being on the move my central theme in life. I hitchhiked through Europe, Central and North America, sailed on cargo ships, liners and tramp vessels, navigated boats for Greenpeace through the South Pacific to Antarctica. I worked in ports in Guatemala and Argentina, analysed transshipment points and transport corridors for aid supplies worldwide for the UN. And I believe that, consciously or unconsciously, impressions from these journeys are reflected in my creative work—whether it was the sails of junks in Hong Kong harbour, the rugged forms of young icebergs, or the interplay of light in the foliage of a tropical rainforest.

For me, the residency in Palas completes a circle that began on the Ulla River near Santiago and leads back to the Ulla near Palas.

WOLF’S DO PICHO PROJECT

Working concept: “Equilibrium”
During my residency, I will be working with kinetic objects (mobiles) made of stone, wood, and handmade paper. The primary materials will be objects from the area surrounding Palas de Rei: stones and slate slabs, branches, and wooden sticks. Through my choice of materials, I intend to consciously reference the landscape surrounding Palas de Rei and demonstrate a respectful approach to nature. Designing the objects as mobiles will emphasize two important aspects: The different elements of the mobiles must be balanced in a fragile equilibrium. The interplay of different materials symbolizes the necessary balance between earth (e.g., stone) and life (e.g., wood) and the vulnerability of this balance.

And the mobiles react to their surroundings – in the planned exhibition setting, to the people who set the air around them in motion.
In recent decades, I have primarily focused on creating sculptures from stone and wood, as well as designing and crafting everyday objects. For the Residencia I plan a return to the working methods and materials (fragile wooden constructions covered with handmade paper) that also formed the basis for the exhibition “O Contraluz” in the Minotauro Gallery in Santiago de Compostela in December 1995. I will be spending the residency with Winnie Abraham, my wife. Winnie plans to work on texts and poems during the residency.

Workshop
At the beginning of July 2026, Wolf and Winnie will lead a workshop next to the river Ulla. We will work with the impressions and materials provided by Ulla. The aim is to create a snapshot of a place and the installations, drawings, photographs, poems and texts that inspire it.