Figure on pedestal (man), n.d.

Sculpture wood

Dimensions: 119 x 34.50 x 34.50 cm

Stephan Balkenhol's working material is wood. Soft wood, from which he peels out his rough figures with traces of work. He reduces their gestures and facial expressions, gives them only a coat of paint and positions them on a wooden base: "My sculptures don't tell stories, but there is something mysterious hidden in them. It is not my task to reveal it, but that of the viewer to discover it," says the artist himself. "It is an art that wants nothing - and is therefore wanted", says the ZEIT.

Born in Fritzlar, Germany, in 1957, Balkenhol studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg with Ulrick Rückriem. With the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff scholarship, he embarked on his path to becoming a sculptor. In the 1980s, he succeeded in redefining figurative sculpture, which had been characterised by fragmentation and abstraction since the beginning of modernism. Today Balkenhol is one of the best-known contemporary sculptors. He is one of the "most important German sculptors" (Tagesspiegel) and "most distinguished representatives of contemporary sculpture" (Welt am Sonntag).