Stephan Balkenhol

Breaking with a certain modern abstract sculpture tradition, Stephan Balkenhol (1957) has returned to figuration and a creative process that favours craftsmanship. Going against the stream of an ultra-rapid society, he has rediscovered a taste for slow elaboration where the physical relationship to the material (roughly cut raw wood) triumphs. His work is a concentration of sensuality, vivacity and monumentality, always counterbalanced by a drop of humour. Castle is a painted wooden relief and presents a view of the castle of Bourscheid, caught between the invading materiality of the massive support and the immateriality of the ephemeral idyll. The portraits of Grand Duke Jean and Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte (LL.AA.RR. Le Grand-Duc Jean et La Grande-Duchesse Joséphine-Charlotte) are museum commissions in homage to its royal homonym.