Stephan Balkenhol
My sculptures are open, you have to imagine the stories yourself.
The oeuvre of sculptor Stephan Balkenhol (1957, Germany) consists of figurative wood sculptures, which he crafts from a single unworked block. His freehand chipping and carving of the wood is reminiscent of a draughtsman’s pencil sketching and results in pieces that are to some extent deliberately sketchy in feel, an air that is reinforced by the loose splinters that he leaves sticking out and by his use of loose pigments in the finish. One could not say that any given line in Balkenhol’s sculptures is worked out to a detailed conclusion, yet the overall effect is nevertheless quite realistic and compelling. Accordingly, the figures featuring in Balkenhol’s œuvre, rather than being individuals as such, are universal archetypes that allow viewers to project their own stories onto them.
