Overview
While basing himself on the rules of great classical sculpture (the artist is perfectly familiar with Roman and Egyptian sculpture), the artist also escapes from it by the very removed treatment of the wood and the timeless side of his figures.
The work of the German artist born in 1957 in Hessen is no longer to be presented. Little shown in Paris (this is his third exhibition), his sculptures have been the subject of important exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Recently, the Museum of Santiago de Compostela devoted a major exhibition to Balkenhol, as did the Bawag Foundation in Vienna, the European Sculpture Foundation in Brussels and the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg. In the United States, Balkenhol's works have been shown at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnatti, the Saint Louis Art Center and the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, among others.
The works presented in this exhibition were created according to the gallery space, punctuated by a wall which served the sculptor to express his work in a dialogue between bas-reliefs and three-dimensional sculptures. A material that the artist has not yet used very much appears here in his idea of "Eve": bronze.
While basing himself on the rules of great classical sculpture (the artist is perfectly familiar with Roman and Egyptian sculpture), the artist also escapes from it by the very removed treatment of the wood and the timeless side of his figures. To what era does this man dressed in black trousers and a white shirt belong: sometimes an integral part of a pedestal, not exceeding in his whole body the real size of a head, sometimes monumental, sharply carved out of an entire tree trunk.
It is up to the spectator to give full meaning to the figure that turns towards him. It then takes on its full autonomy.
