June 2026

Kaja Stumpf
'Chaos carry me Gently'

3 - 27 June 2026

Kaja Stumpf's third solo show at Blue Shop Gallery brings together works made between 2024 and 2026, exploring themes of selfhood, suffering and loss. In Gallery 1, light falls across warm backs and sparkles on young faces, evoking hope, ambition and possibility. Gradually, however, the mood shifts towards yearning and solitude.

As the exhibition unfolds, the surface of the canvas becomes increasingly disrupted by gestures of violence and pain. As you descend into Gallery 2, a palpable female rage emerges alongside a darkness that seems to engulf the figure, though she remains caught in the act of pulling herself free.

Stumpf paints these works in her own image, using the figure as both subject and vessel for experiences of vulnerability, endurance and transformation.

Kaja Stumpf (b.1987) is a Norwegian artist living and working in London. She gained her MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, UAL in 2022. Stumpf’s recent work examines memory, self-representation and the mind-body connection. She explores the idea of selective memory and cognitive bias as a means of self-preservation and through painting, visualises the rumination of potential scenarios between past and present. Utilising staged images and the photographic family archive, she crops the scene and alters the colours to create a sense of delayed familiarity. Kaja Stumpf has exhibited at London Art Fair and Saatchi Gallery in 2025 and has a growing international collector base. This is Stumpf’s third solo show after 'Only Tears Can Quench These Flames' in 2025 and ‘Pleasure is a far away land’ at BSG in 2024. Stumpf’s work is in collections internationally and in 2025 her work ‘Traveler, There Is No Path (Veien Blir Til Mens Man Går)’ was acquired by FAMM Female Artists of Mougin’s Museum. Kaja Stumpf is represented by Blue Shop Gallery.

View Exhibition

Blue Shop Gallery | 72 Brixton Road, Oval