Stephan Balkenhol

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Stephan Balkenhol 2018

Stephan Balkenhol (born February 10, 1957 in Fritzlar ) is a contemporary German sculptor .

Life

Stephan Balkenhol grew up in Fritzlar, Luxembourg and Kassel as the youngest of four sons of a housewife and a grammar school teacher and attended the European School in Luxembourg for several years , where his father was teaching at the time. Balkenhol passed his Abitur at the Kassel Friedrichsgymnasium . With his classmate Peer Schröder he published the hectographed magazine Schorli Morli ; They had already explored Documenta 5 years earlier . Balkenhol studied from 1976 to 1982 at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg with Ulrich Rückriem, among others . The Karl Schmidt-Rottluff scholarship enabled him to make his way into a sculptor.

Afterwards he was a teacher at the Städel Art Institute in Frankfurt . Since 1992 he has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe . In his office in Karlsruhe, his students have the opportunity to comment on his work.

Balkenhol lives and works in Karlsruhe, Berlin, Meisenthal in Lorraine and Kassel .

Balkenhol is the brother of Bernhard Balkenhol and Thomas Balkenhol .

plant

Balkenhol works in sculptures , reliefs , drawings and graphic techniques such as lithography , woodcut and screen printing . His roughly hewn and colored painted wooden sculptures are his trademark. He depicts people, animals and architecture, sometimes combined in a surreal way. The focus of his work is on people. He developed basic types, which he varied in many ways. His best-known figure type is the man with black trousers and a white shirt. The clothes and posture of the people portrayed indicate the present. They show no clear emotions, they seem to look into the void or - for the observer - unknown points. The characters remain distant, anonymous and enigmatic.

Wood is Balkenhol's most important work material. Soft types of wood such as poplar or wawa wood allow the artist to precisely work out the faces of his figures. In most sculptures, the figure is carved out of the wood in such a way that the figure and the base remain connected as one piece. The material remains clearly recognizable in his works and the processing remains visible in the rough structure under the color version. The material and visible traces of the work process are thus part of the work of art.

The arm in front of the German Maritime Museum

“My sculptures don't tell any stories. Something mysterious is hidden in them. It is not my job to reveal it, but that of the spectator to discover it. "

- Stephan Balkenhol

"In doing so, I wanted to create works of art that - apart from the figuration - defy any drawer: no explicit reference to tradition, no messages of any kind, no strong expressiveness."

- Stephan Balkenhol

He deliberately gives his figures an indifferent expression so that the viewer has options for interpretation. A smile or any other state of mind would seem too "frozen". He works on several sculptures at the same time and makes around 100 sculptures a year. With wooden figures, the round wooden base is clamped. The figures grow out of the round wood with the work and are held at the same height by the base.

His tallest sculpture to date, the six-meter-high male torso made of cedar wood, Semper più (“More and more”), was temporarily installed in 2009 in the Caesar Forum in Rome .

In 2012, a Balkenhol sculpture on the tower of the Sankt Elisabeth Church in Kassel caused controversy. The director of documenta 13 , Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev , criticized the Catholic Church for putting up this work of art in the run-up to documenta. “It bothers a lot. The artistic director feels threatened by this figure who has nothing to do with documenta (13), ”said documenta managing director Bernd Leifeld . Regardless, the church stuck to the Balkenhol exhibition and installation. Following the exhibition, the sculpture was donated to the St. Elisabeth Church by the artist.

In addition to the unique sculptures and drawings, Stephan Balkenhol has also created an extensive body of bronze editions and prints, which were documented in two catalogs of works in 2014 and 2015.

Selection of works

Art in public space

Man with deer in Hanover
Large column figure in Loerrach
Man + woman in Hamburg in front of the central library of the public library
Man on giraffe in front of Hagenbeck Zoo
The Richard Wagner monument in Leipzig on a base by Max Klinger
Emma , in memoriam Emma Hellenstainer . Bronze, painted

Art in museums

Awards

  • 1983: Karl Schmidt Rottluff scholarship
  • 1986: Working grant from the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
  • 1989: Sponsorship award for the International Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg
  • 1990: Bremen Art Prize
  • 2014: Ordre des Arts et des Lettres , awarded by the French Minister for Culture and Communication, Aurélie Filippetti
  • 2016: Honorary membership of the Academy of Russian Arts

Exhibitions

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “The means of production were Spirit Carbon transfer printers and the associated Geha sets (matrices). Editor Peer Schröder and co-inventor Stephan Balkenhol produced 'on site': Texts and drawings directly on the die, drawn through the machine, back ditto, next sheet (...) all the 'good sheets' gathered (the machine had its pitfalls), title sheet, stapled together on the side - and sometimes there were really hardly more issues than the number of writing, collaging and drawing actors who were involved in the respective issue. ” Michael Kellner : Der Vorderste Westen. 'Loose Blätter Sammlung' and 'Schorli Morli' 1976 - 1979 . In: Kassel literature walk . Kassel 1997, p. 79
  2. ↑ Walk with Stephan Balkenhol , in: Weltkunst , issue 131, special 03 - "DOCUMENTA" (2017), p. 75
  3. ↑ a b Interview with Balkenhol on Norddeutscher Rundfunk, NDR Kultur, on January 5, 2009 from 10:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. and from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
  4. ^ Reports: Atelierhaus in Berlin , at www.baunetz.de
  5. ^ Atelier Balkenhol - new building, Day of Architecture, Chamber of Architects and Town Planners Hessen: Program 2016. In: www.akh.de. Retrieved June 26, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Ute Diehl, Barbarisches Relikt in der Trümmerstätte ( Memento of the original from November 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , art-magazin.de, November 2, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.art-magazin.de
  7. ↑ "documenta is bothered by Balkenhol sculpture" , Welt-online on May 9, 2012, according to dpa, accessed on May 15, 2012
  8. ^ Sculpture gallery Löhrl (ed.): Stephan Balkenhol. Bronze editions 1992-2014. Mönchengladbach 2014 and Dirk Dobke, Holger Priess: Stephan Balkenhol - prints and photo editions. Hamburg 2015
  9. ↑ The "man on buoy" is swimming again. In: Hamburger Abendblatt, May 20, 2010, p. 7
  10. ↑ Julian Schmelmer: The buoy man returns. In: Hamburge Abendblatt , August 4, 2020, p. 13.
  11. ^ Stephan Balkenhol: Man and Woman
  12. ↑ Balkenhol Big Kneeling Man. Retrieved October 4, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen, Germany: Waiblingen: Seahorse sculpture landed on the Rems - Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen . ( zvw.de [accessed on July 21, 2018]).
  14. ↑ hbksaar.de: Award of honorary membership of the Academy of Russian Arts to Stephan Balkenhol and Matthias Winzen ( Memento from October 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ Kunsthalle-Emden. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 2, 2018 ; accessed on July 2, 2018 (German).
  16. ↑ myknokke-heist.be: Expo Stephan Balkenhol

Web links

Commons : Stephan Balkenhol  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiversity: Stephan Balkenhol: Reliefportrait (2007)  - course materials
personal data
SURNAME Balkenhol, Stephan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Fritzlar