30 of Sept. 7 PM. Opening: ”Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” says the second commandment, preventing idolatry towards beings, nature, and inanimate objects. Thus, humans emancipate from slavery facing the realistic representation. But they are not protected from slavery facing the too animated, body-allergic, absolute ideas. Stephan Balkenhol (1957) carves only human figures, directly in wood, like Brâncuși. But he does not polish them. He does not run towards abstraction, pure form, or concept. He stresses instead the physicality, the very presence of the rough wood cut alive. Stephan Balkenhol carves pure and simple people. Rather simple than pure, his common figures wear banal clothes, do conventional gestures and show diminished expressions. Raised on pedestals, as if idols on altars, the realist figures contest in fact idolatry - they have nothing exemplary to worship to. Their moral vigor resides precisely in this muted, precarious humanism. Event made in partnership with Goethe-Institut Bucharest