Stephan Balkenhol

Item set

Title
Stephan Balkenhol
Description
The eponymous exhibition of German artist Stephan Balkenhol (1957) provisionally concluded Witte de With’s investigation into the depiction of the human figure and the question of mimesis in contemporary art. This inquiry began with the exhibitions by Ken Lum (in 1990), John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres (in 1991), and Philip Akkerman (in 1992).

The human and animal figures Balkenhol carves from wood deal with mimesis, in particular with the representation of body and face. The image of the human body is the most immediatly comprehensible of symbols. Accross national traditions and limitations of education and language, recognition of the body’s physiognomy and gestures creates a spontaneous acknowledgment of meaning.

Yet when Balkenhol started to create his sculptures, it was downright taboo to work figuratively: “I have to reinvent the figure, the tradition is interrupted.”

Modernist sculpture had excluded representation, replacing it with the organic creation of plastic symbolic situations, as in the work of Joseph Beuys or Jannis Kounellis, or with nonobjective systems, as in the work of Carl Andre or Donald Judd. Yet at the same time, the figurative tradition was continued by Fascist and Soviet art, which returned to the stereotypes of the nude and the uniformed hero.

Balkenhol’s sculptures simultaneously interfere with the trajectories of radical modernist sculpture and idealized, universal state symbols. His figures are rarely nude and carry no specific attributes. His representations of the human figure are neither models of a universal human ideal nor specific portraits. Presented as solitary figures or as a crowd of individuals, as in 57 Penguins (1991), his sculptures speak about difference, about the differences between what is communal and what is specific.

The exhibition presented a survey of Balkenhol’s work, including reliefs, heads, and figures of different scales, all rapidly carved from single pieces of wood. In conjunction with the exhibition, Balkenhol realized a permanent sculpture for the Witte de With stairwell, Freistehende Relieffigur.

Participants

Stephan Balkenhol

Curators

Chris Dercon, Gosse Oosterhof

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Identifier
KIM-EXH-4300
92_7
Type
Exhibition
Date
1992-02-06/1992-03-21
Temporal Coverage
1992
Publisher
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art
Spatial Coverage
Rotterdam
Language
en
Is Part Of
Exhibition history
Rights Holder
Kunstinstituut Melly
Creator
Stephan Balkenhol
Contributor
Chris Dercon
Source
https://www.kunstinstituutmelly.nl/en/exhibitions/4300-stephan-balkenhol
depiction
https://www.kunstinstituutmelly.nl/images/fkawdw_005155image.jpg?w=3000
has exact match
art exhibitions

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