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Work as Action

Franz Erhard Walther

[...] Franz Erhard Walther counts among those artists who, in the 1960s, sought to undermine the authorial role of the artist in favour of a more democratic aesthetic dependent on the interaction of viewer and object. Others with similar ideas whose work has entered the curatorial limelight of late include Charlotte Posenenske, featured in the last Documenta and subject of a one-person show this summer at Artists Space here in New York. Unlike Posenenske ¬– who wished to divorce the hand from artmaking in favour of mechanised labour – Walther seems to take his cue from Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man: simple and individual acts such as folding and lying, leaning and stepping are either the source of his often minimal works or the means by which individual viewers may interact with them.

On view in this small-bore show are, for example, rolled tubes of kraft paper and painting-size sheets of creased paper hung picturelike on the wall. Their forms are determined by what they are: artmaking basics affected by basic human activities; they exist as artworks because they record these actions. [...] 

A short essay by the show’s curator, Yasmil Raymond, available at the entrance to the galleries, refers to the influence of Walther’s ‘provocative meditations on art as temporal, subjective, and self-guided’ on his students at the Hochschule für bildende Kunste Hamburg, among them Santiago Sierra, Martin Kippenberger and John Bock. No mention is made of the broader issues of viewer participation, use of quotidian materials and challenges to artistic authority which played out widely in Europe and Latin America during the late 1950s and 60s. Such a discussion would help to situate Walther’s work and counter its subsumption into the minimalist aesthetic which tends to flatten much at Dia.

What is clear, however, is the influence of Joseph Beuys – from the arrangement of small objects, including simple rectangular boxes without tops, in vitrines (a curatorial choice), to Walther’s interest in what appear to be accidental marks or the signs of ageing on canvas and paper. These reveal an interest in chance and in the role of natural forces as artistic agents. But Walther’s greatest overlap with Beuys seems to be an interest in the human and the social. None of his work makes sense unless understood through our sensations. Many pieces seem to imply an absent actor; most require participation, and several are designed to relate bodies to one another. 

But where Beuys was busy developing vast mythologies, Walther stripped away mystery. His works are what they say they are: a plinth for stepping on; a vest; two muslin boxes (1963); three soft pink lacquer plates (1963). Such straightforward names place art in the everyday, stripping away the authority of the artist. But they also reflect a somewhat dull, ponderous vein in the work. 

How inviting are the objects in 1. Werksatz, after all? Made from heavy canvas duck, they have the look of military gear or items for doing chores. They seem long on earnest ideas and short on fun, an impression reinforced by the sententious texts typed or written on the many drawings displayed in the same gallery as 1. Werksatz. One reads, in German, ‘Body is axis’; others, in English, ‘The space becomes ponderable’, ‘The action in space makes time visible’, ‘The patience of the actor is a condition for producing the work’. It’s a bit too heavy, like the objects, to bring the kind of sensory, social, and aesthetic experience the concepts behind the work seem to intend. 

http://www.artreview.com/forum/topics/franz-erhard-walther-work-as