Stephan Balkenhol

Sculptures and reliefs

In the work of Balkenhol, the age-old human urge to represent is linked with the tradition of art aimed at creating a world that is analogous to this world, and yet exists alongside it. The aim is not to be absorbed, unthinkingly, in this make-believe world, but to become all the more aware of its unique reality by offering a representation…

Balkenhol’s sculptures of commonplace people are not narrative in any explicit way, but are rather suggestive of a certain story, which, with its recognizable characters or situations, seems at once familiar and strange…

Balkenhol works primarily in wood, out of which his figures and architectural structures emerge in free-standing low- and high-relief forms. Even after they are painted, their surfaces remain rough and unfinished…

Balkenhol’s figures are a kind of twenty-first century “everyman” – neither idealized nor individualized. The “standing man” character has been described by one critic as “… short, homely and needs to lose a few pounds. He’s the type of man you would never notice in a crowd, and who would no doubt bore you to tears on a date (he’d probably spend the evening talking about his power drill)…