Stephan Balkenhol meets Old Masters at the Museum Wiesbaden

Ten years ago, the Museum Wiesbaden restructured its Old Masters collection and designed various themed rooms. Exhibitions focussing on portraits, still lifes and landscapes, religion or mythology are complemented by contemporary positions.

Currently, sculptures by Stephan Balkenhol enter into a powerful dialogue with the works of the Old Masters. His human and animal figures, which he depicts sitting or standing, are an essential part of the exhibition and – alongside the museum audience – simultaneously slip into the role of the viewer. As Balkenhol summarises: "On behalf of the exhibition visitor, my figures stand in a picture gallery, looking at art and history and trying to locate themselves.“

Balkenhol, who is also inspired by art history, thus offers new perspectives on art in several respects. His protagonists, above all the man in black suit trousers and white shirts, as he so often appears, remain mysterious: their facial expressions betray no emotion, the possibilities for interpretation are all the more numerous. In Balkenhol’s work, the human figure usually takes centre stage – whether roughly crafted from wood or cast in bronze.