Studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg.  Lives and works in Karlsrühe, Germany and Meisenthal, France.

Stephan Balkenhol’s wooden sculptures spurn the classical ideals of beauty and present us with the nondescript everyday man/woman. His works have affinities to the wood carving tradition of the Middle Ages and northern renaissance and the “naive” folk art of Poland and eastern Europe, yet there is more whimsy than Gothic in his forms. As Neal Benezra said in his 1995 catalogue of Balkenhol’s exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, “ He does not seek to recapture the heroic glory of bygone periods but rather demonumentalizes the figurative statue by thrusting the most unremarkable men and women onto pedestals historically reserved for heroes and heroines.”

Using a variety of woods such as wawa, poplar and Douglas fir, Balkenhol chisels away at impressive logs using power saws and hammers, letting his sculptures of lifelike men, woman, animals and perhaps even a hybrid of the two emerge. The figures spring forth, all part of the same log, thus bound literally to their base. This carving technique links him to German Expressionism, yet the men and woman in his works have deadpan expressions. He works to resist this heritage by avoiding gesture. It is the exposed incisions and rough surfaces on the finished forms that give a sense of vitality and compelling humanism.

Balkenhol avoids creating a narrative or leading to an allegorical interpretation. His figures are devoid of specific associations. His figures wear nondescript outfits, further emphasizing the everydayness of their forms. In the case of Four Women Group from 1998, all four women wear the same uniform, not likely to give anything away. He uses paint sparingly, only for clothes, hair, lips and eyes, letting the raw wood speak for the skin tones. The figures are either smaller than life, as in Small Pair (man with red shirt, woman with black shirt) of 1997 or larger than life as in the work Large Classical Man and Large Woman with Green Pants of 1996, but they are never quite human size. Balkenhol doesn’t want to fool you, he wants to make sure you know it’s a sculpture. He has resuscitated the figurative sculpture from what was a burdensome tradition and has given it his own distinctive approach.