Germany
* February 10, 1957 Fritzlar
Stephan Balkenhol is probably the best-known contemporary German sculptor. His works can be found in many German and European cities, but we also visited his art in Chicago and Toronto. The artist’s trademarks are his roughly carved and then painted wooden sculptures. Balkenhol mainly depicts people and, less frequently, animals, which he sometimes combines in a surreal manner.
His most famous character is a man wearing black trousers and a white shirt. He looks over the Alster in Hamburg, stands in the city park in Bonn, with his arms outstretched in Munich’s pedestrian zone or on a huge Mozartkugel in Salzburg. He sits on a giraffe, holds a skyscraper or a fish in his arms and greets from a church tower.
Stephan Balkenhol’s characters seem to look emotionlessly into the distance; joy and sorrow, laughter and tears appear to be alien to them. The wooden figures remain distant and enigmatic, which the artist comments as follows:
“My sculptures don’t tell stories. There is something mysterious hidden in them. It’s not my job to reveal it, it’s the viewer’s job to discover it”
