Manuel Ursprung is a German-born, British-based artist whose sculptural reliefs trace an arc from delicate plaster imprints to more tactile, transformative works in latex. Drawing on travel and memory, his pieces explore the tension between containment and emergence, reimagining the relationship between surface, form and becoming.
My work is a meditation on transformation both physical and psychological and the fragile boundaries that define identity. Starting with fragile plaster reliefs that captured traces of memory and place, I have recently shifted to latex as a primary material, allowing me to engage more directly with the body’s metaphorical and literal skins.
Latex, with its elasticity and tension, becomes a second skin a surface that both contains and resists. Through layering latex over wood and polystyrene forms, I explore the sensation of being trapped within fixed social patterns, expectations, or fears, and the desire to break free into new states of being.
I am fascinated by the in-between spaces: where softness meets rigidity, visibility clashes with concealment, and stability gives way to emergence. My work invites viewers to reflect on their own moments of becoming to inhabit the uncomfortable, exciting space where identity is not fixed but continually evolving.
2025 Group Exhibition, Saatchi Art Gallery, ArtEvol, Voices from the Undefined, London, United Kingdom
2022 Group Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Annual Exhibition‘22, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
2019 Group Exhibition, Paul Smith, Mayfair, London, United Kingdom
PUBLICATIONS
2023 Future Now, Aesthetica Art
2022 Artmag, Edinburgh’s RSA Annual, The Persistence of Familiar
2022 Aesthetica Art Magazine, October/ November, Issue 109