Stephan Balkenhol: Skulpturen und Reliefs

Tokyo Opera City Gallery hosts the German artist’s wooden world

Three Men on a Bench, 275x100x396cm, painted poplar, 1997, DSV-Gruppe, Stuttgart Courtesy of Tokyo Opera City Gallery

Devoid of forceful gestures and dramatic narratives, the sculptures of German artist Stephan Balkenhol are powerfully humanist visions of the figure. Their everyman and -woman features are memorable and affecting not for any particular concepts or allegories, but for the raw intensity in the jagged carving that defines their surfaces. Varying from miniature and life-size bodies to enormous busts, the works’ surfaces display the frenzied energy of German expressionism while at the same time creating a stoically cool approach to the figure.

Humor features prominently throughout many works, such as in the series entitled Figure and Abstract Relief (2004). These pint-size spectators circle a small partition in the first floor gallery and variously stare at or turn their backs to the wall-hung reliefs accompanying them. Carved directly from enormous logs of wood, which are at once the piece and the pedestal, this collection amusingly fills the gallery space while reflecting the act of looking at art back on visitors.

Installation view, “Stephan Balkenhol: Skulpturen und Reliefs,” The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2005 Kazuo Fukunaga

The carved two-dimensional images behind these figures are straightforward works that recall minimalist abstractions of the ’70s. But, as in Man with Black Pants and Lozenge Relief (2004), much of this imagery takes on an optical illusion-like quality through its connection to the associated sculpture. Moving around the figure, one finds each different viewpoint reveals intriguing aspects of the two components’ relationship.

As the exhibition’s title implies, several of the pieces on display are simply relief works by themselves. Many of these are groups of portraiture, as in Reliefs of Heads (1992), which, while maintaining a highly textured surface, paradoxically recall the stylized flatness of paintings by American artist Alex Katz.

Elephant Man, 178x36x31.5cm, painted wawa wood, private collection, Hamburg Courtesy of Tokyo Opera City Gallery

Far more impressive among Balkenhol’s relief works are the meticulously crafted compositions of architecture from cities all over Germany. The wonderfully tactile presence of images like Grindel Multistory Apartment Buildings, Hamburg (2004) immediately demands closer inspection. The intricacies of their carved surfaces add depth and interest to the relatively conventional imagery in a manner that blurs the lines between painting and sculpture and offers an insightful statement on the nature of Balkenhol’s materials and practice.

This roughly worked surface is present throughout all the works in “Skulpturen und Reliefs” but is most affecting in larger pieces like Three Men on a Bench (1997) and 2 Nudes on the Table (2002). As people, the figures appear solely to be expressionless clones of one another. Each stands in an identical pose and wears the same sparsely painted and utilitarian uniform, but the fierce cutting across their surfaces brings compelling dynamism to otherwise common forms and produces an emotional balance between simplicity and mysteriousness.

Despite this inherent vitality, Opera City’s sizable galleries tend to overpower and diminish the works due to the abundance of large empty spaces throughout the show. One is left wishing for more of Balkenhol’s work to counter these voids and create a greater tension and more meaningful connections between the different pieces. Yet the artist’s deliberate use of traditionally folksy materials, like chainsaws and tree stumps, creates immediately accessible and unusually provocative icons of the human form that demand attention and overcome the less than ideal surroundings.

Tokyo Opera City, until Dec 25. See exhibition listings (Shinjuku) for details.

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