Author Description

German artist Stephan Balkenhol, known for his figurative wood sculptures, is responsible for some of our most idiosyncratic contemporary public art. Usually hewn out of poplar, his figures of humans, animals and animal-human hybrids--whether an innocuous-looking everyman or a mix of man and beast--are oddly both surreal and inconspicuous in the streets, squares and office corridors they populate. For example, Giraffe Man (2006)--a figure of a man with an elongated giraffe's neck--one of Balkenhol's best-known public pieces, conveys a peculiar, deadpan humor without crossing over to grotesquerie or sensation. This well-illustrated volume documents Balkenhol's public sculptures since 2000, and serves as a catalogue of all his sculptural work since 1984.