Balkenhol is recognised not only for the technical prowess with which he hand-carves his wooden sculptures, but for his devotion to exploring the role of figuration within contemporary art. Balkenhol uses a simple hammer and chisel to gauge his figures from whole tree trunks, rendering their features from the wood. Though the trunk’s height symbolically elevates this figure, the style of the platform is natural rather than grandiose. Balkenhol accentuates the rustic quality of the wood by leaving chisel marks visible on the wooden surface. Distributed evenly, these marks expose the trace of the artist's tools and reveal knots, grain and cracks. In this way the surface of the work remains as a document to the sculpting process. Liberated from the moral, political and aesthetic precepts that typically shape depictions of the human form, this figure reveals instead what the artist describes as a “wooden mirror” for the viewer’s imagination.