Stephan Balkenhol

Stephan Balkenhol’s creativity relates to a long tradition of three-dimensional art. He studied with Ulrich Rüchriem and found his own sculptural language in contrast both with the minimalist tradition and the history of figurative sculpture. Using traditional tools like hammer and chisel, apparently ordinary men and women emerge from huge blocks of wood, figures he himself refers to as “Everyman”.

Balkenhol first attracted attention for his wood sculptures in 1987. In soft woods such as wawa and poplar, the figures take shape, the artist leaving the works with clear traces of his chisel. There are clear parallels with the marble sculptures of antiquity, but the most obvious difference is that Balkenhol’s figures are clothed. His wood sculptures are rough and painted in bright colours. They wear everyday clothes, giving no clues to their social status, job or personality. Facial expressions are always serious and neutral. Paradoxically enough, this deidentification enables identification; they are no-one at all and at the same time they are each and every one of us.

Balkenhol’s sculptures have been shown in many institutions and public spaces including in Rome, London, Paris, Berlin and New York. He is represented in almost 100 international institutions, including Neue Pinakothek in Munich, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the National Museum of Art in Osaka, the Art Institute of Chicago and Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. To Swedish audiences, Balkenhol is best known for his two figures on stilts, six metres tall, that have stood outside Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg since 2004.

This spring, Balkenhol will have a solo exhibition at König Galerie in Berlin.