Stephan Balkenhol

Born in 1957, Stephan Balkenhol is one of those pioneering German sculptors who over the past two decades have also provided important impulses internationally. In a comprehensive survey the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden turns to the œuvre of the sculptor, who has taught at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe since 1992 until 2025. In the process Balkenhol’s comprehensive craftsmanship comes into view, as does the diversity of his references to intellectual and cultural history. Balkenhol chooses the human figure, the head, animals and also architecture as motifs for his sculptures, reliefs, drawings and photographs. In a certain sense Balkenhol’s artistic approach is a response to the minimalist strategies of Ulrich Rückriem, who was his teacher at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1976 to 1982. Since the early 1980s Stephan Balkenhol has been exploring what can be shown, felt and seen today by means of the statuary image in an updating engagement with the tradition of classical sculpture. The human figure stands at the centre of Stephan Balkenhol’s work. He hews his figures out of a tree trunk with a chisel; tool marks, the stumps of branches and cracks remain visible. He uses colour to give structure to the sculpture. The figures appear personal and anonymous at the same time. Gesture, posture and facial expression suggest both an inner distance and an attentive, open turning towards the viewer. Balkenhol’s figures are not expressive “storytellers.” Rather, he seems to be searching for a concentrate of human physiognomy and appearance. His figures therefore seem unpretentious, unobtrusive and at the same time removed from time: “I do not want garrulous, expressive, emphatic figures. That is why I look for the open expression, from which all states are possible.” The openness of his figures, the renunciation of gesture and of any narrative context, is a counter-position to a deliberately contemporary or illustrative figuration which does indeed address a single aspect but, in a kind of snapshot, thereby restricts all variety of interpretation. Alongside the sculptures and reliefs devoted to the human figure, to animals, to mythical motifs and to architecture, the many-sided and often less familiar facets of his sculptural work are reproduced in this substantial book, together with large drawings and photographic works.

Exhibitions:
Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 15/07 – 17/09/06
Museum Küppersmühle für moderne Kunst, Duisburg, 28/09 – 03/12/06
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Mönchsberg, 17/02 – 24/06/07