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Stephan Balkenhol
February 4th, 2010 to April 3rd, 2010
Monica De Cardenas: Monica De Cardenas Via Francesco Vigano 4, Milan, 20124
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Opening with the artist
Thursday 4 February 2010 at 6pm
We are please to announce an exhibition of new works by Stephan Balkenhol, one of the most prominent contemporary sculptors, whom we represent in Italy since 1996. In recent years he has created also many public works, among these a monumental sculpture of a male torso shown at the Foro di Cesare in Rome form 25th October 2009 to 15th January 2010: a contemporary presence among the ancient ruins.
Stephan Balkenhol was born in Fritzlar (Hessen) in Germany in 1957 and since more than twenty years has been breathing new life into figurative sculpture with intense and original work. After leaving the Hamburg Academy, where he studied with the German minimalist sculptor Ulrich Ruckreim, Balkenhol soon discovered his preference for wood as a material and his interest in wanting "to reinvent the figure".
The human figure, animals, and recently also architecture, are the motifs Balkenhol chooses for his sculptures. He gouges them out of a tree trunk, and the 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 sculptures. 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 absence 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, would restrict all other possible interpretations. By turning to themes of everyday in his sculptures, relief 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.
Since 1984 he has shown extensively in European and American galleries and museums, among these the Nationalgalerie Berlin 1994, Hirshhorn Museum Washington 1995; Galleria Civica Trento 1999, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea of Santiago di Compostela 2001, Sprengel Museum of Hannover 2003, National Museum of Art of Osaka 2005, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden 2006, MKM Duisburg and Museum der Moderne Salzburg 2007, Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea Milano 2007 and Deichtorhallen Hamburg in 2008-2009.
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