Artist_Stephan Balkenhol

Stephan Balkenhol, Tre nudi femminili, 2006, legno di wawa dipinto, h 250 cm ca. Londra, collezione privata J.P.D. Geertman

Another wood artist that carves people out of blocks of wood: Stephan Balkenhol loves wood more than anything else. Women that hide in the trunk of a cedar tree, faces inlaid in a log.  His casual and undistinguished “guys and gals”, enigmatic and somewhat sad, are inspired by people he has photographed on the street.

Credit: Christine Jegan

 The artist makes these figures from soft wood (poplar or African wawa) cut with a power saw, hammer, and chisel creating rich surfaces where every mark of the chisel is visible. Calling to mind the great tradition of German figurative sculpture in wood and the expressionist heritage of the Germans, Balkenhol’s people are curiously devoid of emotion and have been described as “German Expressionism without the expressionism.”

I first saw Stephan Balkenhol’s work at the exhibition “Past Present Future”, a collection of work organized by the Unicredit Group Art Collection at Palazzo della Ragione in Verona 2010, with a giant man’s head in the center of the section “Face to Face”.

Testa maschile

Stephan claims: The people that I photograph on the street have no uneasiness. I show with irony the people of our times.”

What do you think about this German artist? Could you be one of his average people?

Tags: aesthetics, art, art criticism, contemporary art, sculpture, Stephan Balkenhol, Unicredit Art Collection