Stephan Balkenhol is certainly one of the internationally most famous German artists alongside Gerhard Richter or Georg Baselitz. Since the 1980s, these artists have been searching for new ways of formulating everyday material for their works. Since about 1982, the human figure and the head, which are directly cut out of the block of wood, have shaped the work of Stephan Balkenhol. Very often the man in black business trousers and white shirt. An archetype as he can be found worldwide from Hong Kong to New York and Shanghai. Balkenhol uses traditional tools to work the wood, which he perceives as a living substance. In this way, cracks, grooves, splinters and cracks remain visible and refer to the sculptural working process. The man in black and white is always without any sign of subjective condition or emotion. Thus the sculpture is free of sociological and socio-critical references. In his “everyday uniform” of white shirt and black trousers and casual posture, the man in black and white could thus be the sculpture of everything, doing and thinking everything, representing everything. Stephan Balkenhol’s bronze thus becomes the ideal projection surface for his own search for meaning. As an archetype, the man in the white shirt is as important in Balkenhol’s work as the equally famous works of art “Naked Man”, “Grote man, kleine man” in Amsterdam or the Portraits de SS.AA.RR. Le Grand-Duc Jean et La Grande-Duchesse Joséphine-Charlotte from 2006. From October 22, 2020, to February 28, 2021, the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg is showing a comprehensive exhibition of Stephan Balkenhol’s work, which was created in close collaboration with the artist. GALERIE FRANK FLUEGEL will be presenting various bronze sculptures for this occasion.