Sculpture by Stephan Balkenhol
The Mission Bay Art Planning Committee at UCSF welcomes artist Stephan Balkhenhol on Friday, Jan. 13, when he visits the Mission Bay campus to talk about his sculpture of four large figures in the community center.
The campus community is invited to hear Balkenhol talk about his work at 3 p.m. in the Mission Bay Community Center's Fisher Banquet Room. The building is located at 1675 Owens Street at UCSF Mission Bay.
Balkenhol's sculpture of four large figures made of Bubinga wood and acrylic paint was installed in the atrium of the Mission Bay Community Center in October 2005.
Born in 1957, Balkenhol lives and works in Karlsruhe, Germany, and Meisenthal, France. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. His work in rough-hewn painted wood and cast metal has contributed to a rediscovery of the figure, especially as it relates to architecture. Balkenhol frequently works with scale and context in unexpected ways, representing people, animals and sometimes combinations of the two.
For his commissioned work installed in the light-filled atrium of the campus community center, Balkenhol carved four standing figures out of the trunk of a single tree. Each quarter section of the tree is carved into a figure, integral with its base. The figures, elevated and outsized, facing in different directions, mediate between human scale and the scale of the 80-foot-tall atrium space. They express its function as a place where different people cross paths.
The sculpture is part of a growing collection of art works that include large-scale sculptures, furnishings, paintings, drawings and photographs by various artists.
For more information about the lecture, please contact Brenda DePeralta at 415/476-4317.
Photo by Christine Jegan
Links:
Public Art Enhances Life at UCSF Mission Bay
