Press coverage

Frieze, Issue 4, April - May 1992

Frieze, Issue 4, April - May 1992:
"There he stands in his white shirt, unruffled by the breeze, hands hanging limp by his sides, gazing upstream. He rises and falls on the tide, through a long watch. Lighters, launches and barges, pilots and pleasure boats pass him by. Strollers on the bank point him out. Tourists take his photograph. He seems both watchful and oblivious, a man transfixed. Downpours and river mists, gales and frosts do not deter him. Brown fogs of winter dawns drifting into lilac-time; and then, one fine day, he’s gone. He is no mariner, floating there on his pontoon. In his white shirt he looks more like a stranded waiter. When he first appeared he was perched on a buoy, but the river police moved him on. People kept calling the cops about the bloke in the river. Someone decided to attempt a rescue, and dived in. So they gave him a pontoon, where he stands erect, raised on a floating dais." (Adrian Searle - read full article)

The Sunday Times, 23 February 1992:
“Stephan Balkenhol has even managed to pull off a pun, a feat I hope he is aware of. He has anchored a sculpture of a standing male youth in the Thames close to the National Theatre, where it bobs up and down in the wash of police launches and pleasure cruisers. It took me longer than it should have done to realise that this buoy is on the threshold of manhood.” (Frank Whitford)

The Observer, 23 February 1992:
"Out on the Thames, meanwhile, Stephan Balkenhol's shirt-sleeved wooden figure, a commuter Canute, lurches against current and tide. A large head, also by Balkenhol, has been mounted on one of the pillars of the dismantled Blackfriars railway bridge where it could be mistaken for a memorial to a masonic banker. Juan Muñoz's cenotaph on the Jubilee Gardens wall purports to be the memorial to end war memorials. Doubletake brings some fresh thinking to the Hayward." (William Feaver)

The Sunday Telegraph, 23 February 1992:
“Just as Hamilton's piece breaks the bounds of the front-parlour, so others break the bounds of the gallery and are sighted beyond the conflines of the Hayward in the world at large. Most prominent is Stephan Balkenhol's Head of a Man in painted wood, which cannot be missed perched on a pillar alongside Blackfriars Bridge.” (John McEwan)

Evening Standard, 28 February 1992:
“A sculptured figure moored in the Thames off the National Theatre, part of a contemporary art show on the South Bank, has proved a little too lifelike for some caring Londoners. Not only have they contacted security officers at the theatre and called police, but several have attempted to go to his rescue. One even leapt into the river reportedly shouting "Don't jump" and had to be rescued himself by the River Police, while the wooden statue looked on unmoved.” (Robin Stringer)