Stephan BALKENHOL
1957, Germany
Stephan Balkenhol was born in 1957 in Fritzlar (Hesse) in Germany. Today he lives and works between Karlsruhe, Germany and Meisenthal, France.
Balkenhol, an internationally renowned German artist who has been concentrating on the human figure for over two decades, began his sculptural process of figurative wood carving in the mid-eighties – as a response to the abstract, minimalist and conceptual approaches of the Hamburg School of Fine Arts where he studied from 1976 to 1982 under Ulrich Rückriem. His first figurative wooden sculptures from 1983 of a larger-than-life naked man and woman placed the human figure at the centre of his work and reintroduced the figure to contemporary sculpture. In the 1990s he added animals and hybrids, and more recently architecture to his artistic vocabulary. His practice also comprises drawings and photographs.
The artist uses a hammer and chisel to gouge his figures out of the tree trunk, leaving the shavings and traces of the tools visible in the wood with its knots, grain and cracks. He then uses paint to structure the sculpture and accentuate the anatomy, in no way heightening the figure’s expressiveness. Balkenhol has been representing contemporary figures, either as free-standing sculptures or reliefs in wood, of the everyday man or woman in order to strip them of any narrative content and onto which the viewer is able to project his own image.
--------------------
Stephan Balkenhol was born in Fritzlar, Hesse in 1957. Between 1976 and 1982 Balkenhol studied sculpture at the Hamburg 'Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste' under the strictly minimalist artist Ulrich Rueckriem. From 1988 to 1989, after having received two scholarships, Balkenhol was offered a teaching position at the Hamburg 'Kunsthochschule'. Subsequently, he taught at the Frankfurt 'Staedelschule' until 1991. Balkenhol has been working at the 'Staatliche Kunstakademie' in Karlsruhe since 1992. The quest for new means of expression and interpretations of everyday materials is clearly reflected in Balkenhol's works. Since approximately 1982 the sculptor's creations have emerged from a singular original idea: a larger-than-life human figure and head, carved straight out of a block of wood. Stephan Balkenhol treats wood with traditional tools, always considering the wood as a living substance. Grooves, cracks, chips and fissures remain visible and document the sculpting process. The figure, the head, the face - in its bodily volume accentuated by color markings - are circumscribed, sometimes close to portraits and always containing a certain 'family likeness', but always also including the necessary degree of generalization for a large form. Balkenhol's figures show no signs of subjective feelings or emotions and contain no sociological or socio-critical references. His figures have a completely autonomous presence with a generalizing vagueness, which exemplifies the existential awareness of life of the post-modern man.
http://www.berggruen.com/artists/stephan-balkenhol