Stephan Balkenhol
14 Apr - 19 May 2007
STEPHAN BALKENHOL
“My sculptures don't tell stories. Something mysterious is concealed in them. It's not my task to reveal this, but the task of the viewer to discover it.”
Stephan Balkenhol
Stephan Balkenhol (born 1957) is one of those trail-blazing German sculptors who in the last two decades has also exerted a great influence internationally. The Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden is devoting an extensive exhibition to the oeuvre of this sculptor, who has been teaching at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe since 1992. The show will focus on Balkenhol's technical mastery and on the diversity of his intellectual and cultural references. The human form, the head, animals, and recently also architecture, are the motifs Balkenhol which chooses for his sculptures, drawings and photographs.
To a certain extent Balkenhol's creative approach is a response to the minimalist strategies of Ullrich Rückriem, his teacher at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1976 to 1982. Since the early 1980s, Balkenhol has been exploring what can actually be shown, sensed, seen by means of statuary images against the backdrop of the current engagement with the tradition of classical sculpture.
At the centre of Balkenhol's work is the human form. The artist gouges his figures out of the tree trunk; traces left by the tools, branch notches and splits in the wood are left visible. Paint is used in a reduced form to structure the sculpture. The figures seem both personal and anonymous. Gestures, poses and facial expressions suggest both inner distance and an attentive openness towards the viewer. Balkenhol's figures are not lively “storytellers”. Instead the artist seeks to condense human physiognomy and appearance, with the result that his figures seem unpretentious, unobtrusive and simultaneously removed from time: “I don't want talkative, expressive figures, which is why I seek an open expression from out of which all states are possible.” The openness of his figures, the renunciation of gesture and a narrative context, is a counter reaction to a deliberately present-oriented or illustrative figuration that may well address an individual aspect, but, being a kind of instantaneous take, restricts all other possible interpretations.
The freedom and easy accessibility of Balkenhol's work is due to this kind of strange closeness. By turning to themes of everyday in his sculptures, reliefs and extensive installations, the artist has fathomed new aesthetic dimensions – also in the public domain and in the context of architecture – and thereby made new options available for contemporary sculpture.
In addition to the sculptures and reliefs dedicated to the human figure, the animal, mythical motifs and architecture, the exhibition will feature the many-sided and often less known facets of this artist's sculptural work and his large drawings and photographs.
The show was curated by Matthias Winzen in close collaboration with Stephan Balkenhol; an extensive and richly-illustrated catalogue in German and English will be published.
For further information, please contact Bénédicte Burrus (+331 42 72 99 00 or benedicte@ropac.net). To obtain visual elements, please contact Guillaume Benaich, guillaume@ropac.net.
“My sculptures don't tell stories. Something mysterious is concealed in them. It's not my task to reveal this, but the task of the viewer to discover it.”
Stephan Balkenhol
Stephan Balkenhol (born 1957) is one of those trail-blazing German sculptors who in the last two decades has also exerted a great influence internationally. The Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden is devoting an extensive exhibition to the oeuvre of this sculptor, who has been teaching at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe since 1992. The show will focus on Balkenhol's technical mastery and on the diversity of his intellectual and cultural references. The human form, the head, animals, and recently also architecture, are the motifs Balkenhol which chooses for his sculptures, drawings and photographs.
To a certain extent Balkenhol's creative approach is a response to the minimalist strategies of Ullrich Rückriem, his teacher at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1976 to 1982. Since the early 1980s, Balkenhol has been exploring what can actually be shown, sensed, seen by means of statuary images against the backdrop of the current engagement with the tradition of classical sculpture.
At the centre of Balkenhol's work is the human form. The artist gouges his figures out of the tree trunk; traces left by the tools, branch notches and splits in the wood are left visible. Paint is used in a reduced form to structure the sculpture. The figures seem both personal and anonymous. Gestures, poses and facial expressions suggest both inner distance and an attentive openness towards the viewer. Balkenhol's figures are not lively “storytellers”. Instead the artist seeks to condense human physiognomy and appearance, with the result that his figures seem unpretentious, unobtrusive and simultaneously removed from time: “I don't want talkative, expressive figures, which is why I seek an open expression from out of which all states are possible.” The openness of his figures, the renunciation of gesture and a narrative context, is a counter reaction to a deliberately present-oriented or illustrative figuration that may well address an individual aspect, but, being a kind of instantaneous take, restricts all other possible interpretations.
The freedom and easy accessibility of Balkenhol's work is due to this kind of strange closeness. By turning to themes of everyday in his sculptures, reliefs and extensive installations, the artist has fathomed new aesthetic dimensions – also in the public domain and in the context of architecture – and thereby made new options available for contemporary sculpture.
In addition to the sculptures and reliefs dedicated to the human figure, the animal, mythical motifs and architecture, the exhibition will feature the many-sided and often less known facets of this artist's sculptural work and his large drawings and photographs.
The show was curated by Matthias Winzen in close collaboration with Stephan Balkenhol; an extensive and richly-illustrated catalogue in German and English will be published.
For further information, please contact Bénédicte Burrus (+331 42 72 99 00 or benedicte@ropac.net). To obtain visual elements, please contact Guillaume Benaich, guillaume@ropac.net.