Four Women Group

Stephan Balkenhol’s carved wood sculptures are significant for their prosaic humor and the artist’s reintroduction of the figure into contemporary art. Four Women Group is composed of four female figures posing unassumingly on heavily proportioned bases. Balkenhol preferred to create his figures either on a larger or smaller-than-life scale, believing that the viewer engages more imaginatively with works that are less realistically sized. The women are dressed in a timeless manner, and, aside from being youthful in appearance, Balkenhol deprives the figures of any situational context. His figures lack expressive features and their bodies have stiff, upright positioning. The effect of their uniform attitude is a sort of mundane humor similar to the works of Claes Oldenburg. Balkenhol denies any political or social commentary associated with these works, arguing that his figures represent an everyman. Classical sculptural traditions of Greek kouroi, Roman busts, and Egyptian figures, which the artist studied during his youth, impacted Balkenhol’s approach to the human form. The statues in Four Women Group display Balkenhol’s technical skill and are handcrafted ruggedly from blocks of Douglas Fir, a medium traditionally used in German folk art. The buoy-like composition of Four Women Group resembles Balkenhol’s most iconic works and installation pieces, such as when he placed one of his wooden figures in the River Thames.