Stephan Balkenhol - Untitled - image-1

Lot 548 D

Stephan Balkenhol - Untitled

Auction 1042 - overview Cologne
29.11.2014, 12:00 - Contemporary Art
Estimate: 30.000 € - 40.000 €
Result: 47.120 € (incl. premium)

Stephan Balkenhol

Untitled
2004

Wood, painted. Height approx. 119 cm, on wooden base height 120 cm. - Traces of studio.

“A Stephan Balkenhol sculpture […] remains within its own boundaries. The viewer is not included to indulge in any private mythology or idiosyncratic preference of the artist, or indeed to read up on hypothetical horizons of meaning or cognitive frames of reference. Just like the artist himself, the viewer is only able to look exactly, notice how the tide of this thoughts and interpretations breaks upon the immobility of the figure. The viewer can sense a pre-linguistic relationship to the piece of dead material, which resembles him so much and hence regard it as a wooden mirror image of his own appearance. Evidently we do not encounter individual portraits amongst Balkenhol´s wooden statues, nor are they extras who might illustrate a politically or discursively more abstract theme such as “migration”, “urbanism” or “post-colonialism”. These images of mankind remind us still more of ideas of what it is to be human which has not yet or can no longer be reduced to the systemic micro-sociological, psychological or macro-sociological. Whatever clothing has been painted onto the figures - simply tailored women´s clothing of modest cut or a white shirt and black trousers - is oriented towards the most everyday normality, it cannot be used as a means of determining either personality or class.” (Matthias Winzen, Where does the sculptor stand?, in: Matthias Winzen (ed.), Stephan Balkenhol, exhibition catalogue, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst Duisburg, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Cologne 2006, p.36)

Provenance

Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich; private collection, Austria