Man with Child or Man with Baby is a Bronze sculpture by Stephan Balkenhol. The human being is at the center of Stephan Balkenhol’s (史蒂芬·巴尔肯霍尔) work. Mostly he is alone, but now and then he can be accompanied by animals or architectural elements. The figures we encounter in his roughly hewn and painted wood or bronze sculptures are anonymous, reserved, even emotionless. A man holds a child on his arm, almost like a mirror of himself. A distorted image, the imagination?

Balkenhol captures unremarkable moments. The people he depicts are completely absorbed in themselves. They seem calm, unbiased, distanced. Their gaze, although directed at us, often seems empty. This further intensifies their astonishing mysteriousness. When Balkenhol studied with Ulrich Rückriem and Sigmar Polke at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts, his figurative compositions ran counter to the prevailing abstract art and conceptual art.

His works are not portraits in the concrete sense: they do not represent anyone in particular, nor are they signs or symbols of people.