At the beginning of the 1980s, Franz Erhard Walther expanded his set of works into "usable" wall formations. Accompanied by explanatory watercolours, these partly wall-filling fabric objects can be understood as multi-part, room-filling sculptures, as architecture or as sculptural pictorial forms. Walther gave the "theatrical" aspect of Minimal Art, which results from the physical confrontation between viewer and artwork, a substantially new quality by configuring the viewer as a reflective actor in his wall formations. In doing so, the recipient can actively experience essential parameters of sculpture such as measurement, time, space and weight, which were articulated by early Minimal Art in the static, unusable object.
All works are handmade by his former wife since the very beginnings.
Franz Erhard Walther studied in the early 60s in Düsseldorf along with Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke.
He taught for nearly 30 years at Kunstakademie Hamburg and was teacher of artists like John Bock, Rebecca Horn, Santiago Sierra, Christian Jankowski, Martin Kippenberger and Jonathan Meese.
2017 Leone d'oro, Biennale di Venezia
