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Indepth Arts News:
"Stephan Balkenhol"
2000-06-17 until 2000-08-27
Contemporary Arts Center
Cincinnati, OH,
USA
Stephan Balkenhol champions the
Everyman through his human and
animal forms that are roughly carved
from blocks of wood. With his careful
attention to material and appreciation
of shape, the 43-year-old German
artist pays tribute to the time-honored
tradition of figurative sculpture in a
non-traditional manner. Though his
body of work includes drawings and
sculptures in a variety of media, wood
remains Balkenhol's preferred
medium and the human figure his
prime subject. With wood, he says, I
can achieve a sense of vitality not
possible in marble or bronze.
The
CAC
is
exhibiting
several
new
Balkenhol works - all large wood
sculptures - which have their première at
the CAC. Often shaping his works from a
single block of wood, Balkenhol
challenges the tradition of slow,
methodical wood carving by attacking his
work with speed and intuition, and
making his figures seem ordinary.
Balkenhol says he seeks an expression
from which one could imagine all other
states of mind ... a starting point for
everything else.
In 1972, the teenage Balkenhol attended
Dokumenta, an international exhibition
of contemporary art held every five years
in Kassel, Germany. During his visit, he
became attracted to the figurative works of Pop and Photo-Realist painters and
sculptors. The experience inspired him to try his hand at carving wood
sculptures of human heads. After receiving training in Minimalism and
Conceptualism in the early 1980s, Balkenhol returned to producing human
forms - clothing them in simple pants and shirts, purposely avoiding any
symbolic implications or storytelling.
Organized by the Contemporary Arts
Center, the exhibition will travel to the
Bell Gallery at Brown University and the
Forum for Contemporary Art in St.
Louis, and will be accompanied by a
CAC-produced catalog.
All images courtesy Barbara
Gladstone Gallery.
IMAGE:
Stephan Balkenhol
Three Men on a Sculpted Pedestal, 2000
Painted Douglas fir
68 x 31 inches diameter
Courtesy Barbara Gladstone Gallery
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