From the 1980s onwards the German artist Stephan Balkenhol (born 1957 in Fritzlar, Germany, lives in Karlsruhe, Germany and Meisenthal, France) has created colorfully painted wooden sculptures and reliefs which explore figuration and the representation of human beings. Roughly carved from single pieces of wawa, oak, beech, and other woods, his works depict stereotyped images of men and women, couples, and other groups. More recently Balkenhol has also made a large relief of a contemporary cityscape.

Created as free standing figures on columns and other pedestals, or as reliefs in various sizes, his works avoid narrative details and depict the everydayness of poses, clothes, gestures and gazes of young men and women, as exemplified by several of Balkenhol’s works in The UBS Art Collection. “He does not seek to recapture the heroic glory of bygone periods but rather demonumentalizes the figurative statue by thrusting most unremarkable men and women on to pedestals historically reserved for heroes and heroines”, is how Neal Benezra once described Balkenhol’s works in a catalogue of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, one of the many worldwide exhibitions of the artist.

A few of his works have also been made for public spaces, where they confront the public with their figurative realism, drawing the attention on a reflection on humankind. Sometimes, as in the works Column Figure Woman and Column Figure Man in The UBS Art Collection, the small scale of the figure in relation to the column literally depicts the subject as a “small man”, or “small woman”. But always, as in Balkenhol’s works, these unpretentious images of people or other figures, are attractive with their genuine craftsmanship and the palette of delightful primary colors used for clothes, lips, and eyes.

Reference:

Stephan Balkenhol, exh.cat. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, 1996