Stephan Balkenhol (1957* Fritzlar Hessen) since more than thirty years has been breathing new life into figurative sculpture with intense and original work. After leaving the Hamburg Academy, where he studied with the German minimalist sculptor Ulrich Rückriem, Balkenhol soon discovered his preference for wood as a material and his interest in wanting “to reinvent the figure”. He gouges them out of a tree trunk, and the traces left by the tools, branch notches and splits are left visible. Paint is used in a reduced form to structure the sculptures. Gestures, poses and facial expressions suggest both inner distance and an attentive openness towards the viewer. By turning to themes of everyday in his sculptures, relief and extensive installations, the artist has fathomed new aesthetic dimensions - also in the public domain and in the context of architecture - and thereby made new options available for contemporary sculpture.

Balkenhol has shown extensively in European and American galleries and museums. He has created many public works, among these a new Richard Wagner Memorial in Leipzig in May 2013; a large-scale presentation at the Church of Saint Elizabeth in Kassel in 2012 and a huge sculpture of a male torso shown at the Fori Imperiali in Rome in 2010. His works are in the collections of some of the most prestigious museums in the world, including the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, the Tate Gallery in London, the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt and the Nationalgalerie in Berlin.