Akinci

In his work Stephan Balkenhol (1957, Germany) investigates the isolated human figure. Animals and flowers often accompany and emphasise the human isolation, his sculptures are based on. Balkenhol has placed permanently or temporarily many monumental works in the outdoor public spaces, including: London, Munster, Frankfurt, Zurich, Dordrecht, Amiens, Hamburg, Lissabon, Munich, Rotterdam and The Hague. His monumental work in the public space as well as his sculptures for the inner space (museum or private collections) reveal his interest in fundamental aspects of the sculptural form and the material as well as his obsession with the human form stripped off by all narrative and allegorical attributes. According to Jeff Wall the sculptures of Stephan Balkenhol are not “nostalgic relics” of a past form of unity, but they are a “dialectical interrogation of the unachieved harmony of the existing world.” (Jeff Wall on Stephan Balkenhol, 1988 in the catalogue: ‘Stephan Balkenhol, über Menschen und Skulpturen’, Witte de With, Rotterdam, 1993).

Stephan Balkenhol has studied at the Academy in Hamburg under Ulrich Rückriem. His colony of penguins and other works can be permanently seen at the Modern Museum in Frankfurt. Major exhibitions have taken place at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington (1995), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal (1996) and the Saatchi Collection in London (1996), Santiago della Compostela (2001), Museum Leeuwarden (2001), Sprengel Museum (2003).

Recent survey of his work: The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo and Osaka, 2005 - 2006.