Stephan Balkenhol

Stephan Balkenhol has redefined the human form in sculpture, merging the attention to formal details supported by the Minimalists with the open-ended abstraction of Conceptual artists. His mentors in the Hamburg School in the late 1970s, including Nam June Paik and Sigmar Polke, were a huge influence on his practice. His portrayal of the naked figure in the early 1980s was followed by an integration of animals and hybrid creatures in the 1990s. His figures, from Barbie doll to life-sized and larger, are crudely carved out of a single block of wood with a chisel and hammer. They proudly display marks of their making, knots, splinters, and shavings. The figures are painted to accentuate anatomy, timeless clothing and expressionless, serene faces. Balkenhol has also generated small scenes for his figures by adding architectural elements. Relief portraits and landscapes, some of which are paired with the three-dimensional figures while others, carved into blocks of wood or handmade screens, are similarly unwavering in their neutrality. The works are physically reminiscent of folk art, yet unattached to allegory or narrative. Balkenhol reinvigorated the figure as a form that can acquire meaning, like that of a puppet or mannequin, without necessarily pushing an agenda.

Balkenhol has exhibited widely around the world. Solo exhibitions of his work have been installed at the Landes Museum, Linz, Austria, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, Germany, Musée de Grenoble, France, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Osaka, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany, and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C, among others. He has also participated in group exhibitions at the Ellipse Foundation Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Museum der Moderne Salzburg Mönchsberg, Austria, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, among many others. The artist has regularly been commissioned for public artworks since the 1980s, many of which are in bronze or steel. Some of the locations hosting Balkenhol’s sculptures are Blackfriars Bridge in London, and the entrance to the Hamburg Zoo in Germany.