Franz Erhard Walther, Positionen, 1969. "Franz Erhard Walther: Work as
Action," Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, Beacon, NY. October 2, 2010–February 13,
2012. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation, NY. Photo: Paula Court
Franz Erhard Walther
Franz Erhard Walther, Work as Action
October 2, 2010 - February 13, 2012
This presentation of works by Franz Erhard Walther will feature a selection of Handlungsstücke (Action Pieces) from the early 1960s, including the complete presentation of 1. Werksatz (First Work Set), 1963–69, from Dia's collection. Acquired in 1978, 1. Werksatz comprises fifty-eight fabric elements, or “instruments,” meant to be activated by visitors to the museum, drawing attention to the body as material form.
Introduction
Franz Erhard Walther is internationally recognized for his five-decade-long
investigation into the spatial, sensorial, and temporal dimensions of forms—
preoccupations he shares with such contemporaries as Donald Judd, Walter
De Maria, Richard Serra, and Blinky Palermo. Since his first experiments during
the early 1960s, Walther’s work has occupied a unique position in the development
of post–World War II avant-garde practice, as he radically abandoned
conventional modes of painting and sculpture in order to examine the process of
art rather than its product. Walther’s distinctive approach to thinking through the
problems visual artists traditionally face—those of form, materials, space, and
subject—led him to conceiving objects and images that challenged the beholder
to act. In acknowledging the impact of viewers’ presence and actions in real
time and space, Walther attempts to suspend the sense of isolation and selfabsorption
that is often associated with viewing art.
The presentation “Work as Action” at Dia:Beacon features over two dozen works,
including, in addition to various experiments on paper, Walther’s first sewn muslin
pieces, known as Handlungsstücke (Action Pieces) from the early 1960s and
examples of his Werkstücke (Work Pieces), in which he initially deployed physical
action as a sculptural principle. Focusing on the activity of “doing,” he began
to involve first hands and later the whole body in a series of activities, such as
pressing, folding and unfolding, wrapping, gluing, cutting, and tearing malleable
materials. An exemplary early work is Vier Faltdeckel (Four Pieces to Be Folded
In), 1962/1963, one among a series of formal inquiries for which he turned to
the weight of his hands to sculpt and to imprint the surfaces of paper—that is, he
enlisted the specific physical attributes of a body part in the creation of a mark.
From early 1963 onward, Walther advanced through his work process an aesthetic
discourse that resists the sole authority of the artist and the contemplative
passivity of the viewer; he has defined his practice instead in terms of chance,
since the work is dependent on the curiosity of the beholders and their willingness
to participate. In Zwei Ovale mit Taschen (Two Ovals with Pockets) and Zwei
Stoffrahmen, plastisch (Two Fabric Frames, Sculptural , both 1963), he appealed
to spectators to engage tactically with the object, by placing their hands inside
pockets in the case of the former and by resting their heads within the frame of
the latter. These early invitations would expand through 1969 into a repertoire of
fabric forms, which together make up 1. Werksatz (First Work Set), a vast work
acquired for Dia’s collection in 1978.
Each of First Work Set’s fifty-eight fabric elements or “instruments for processes”
are intended to be unfolded and used by viewers according to instructions concisely
outlined in their individual titles. Walther’s First Work Set invites visitors to
volunteer in a two-fold activity, to become both beholder and participant—subject
and object—and to engage in actions as individuals and with others, forging a
conceptual and formal circle of implications. In his model, art is experienced as
ephemeral event. Beyond simple tasks related to everyday life, the activities the
work generates refer to the rehearsal of a set of ideas, as he stated: “I kept
trying to show that what I was offering was not real action relationships but rather
demonstration situations. Practice situations.”1
Walther’s provocative meditations on art as temporal, subjective, and self-guided
acts of doing have been foundational to a later generation of artists including
his students at the Hochschule für bildende Kunste in Hamburg—Martin
Kippenberger, John Bock, Christian Jankowski, Santiago Sierra, Jonathan Meese,
among others—who call on viewers to participate in the development of their
work, in effect to produce new and unpredicted realities. Walther contends that
his undertaking is guided by a desire to integrate production and reception: “My
early undertaking of seeking to step out of history, out of the seemingly inviolable
contract that a work is an object produced by an artist, is still something to think
about. I can provoke myself concerning the issue of the work and also attack the
historically defined status of the beholder, according to which perception begins
with the experience. In contrast, I started conceiving my work out of an action,
out of an act.”2
In looking and using the works in this exhibition, it is worth considering the
consequences and dimensions of Walther’s proposal to make "Work as Action"—
consequences not only within art practice but also in social and political realms.
Walther delineates action through form, which occasionally is mediated through
his "instruments for processes"; however, the work is manifested only through its
being activated—a modest proposal, perhaps, but a polemical one, as its potentiality
rests with us, the beholders, and our inclination to participate in this uncontrolled,
uncertain terrain.
Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation
notes
1. Franz Erhard Walther, interview by Georg Jappe, Studio International, no. 192 (1976), p. 66.
2. Franz Erhard Walther (1998), "Resumé of Life and Work," in Franz Erhard Walther: Sites of
Origin—Sites of Influence, Exhibitions 1962–2000 (Nordhorn, Germany: Städtische Galerie
Nordhorn, 1999), pp. 22–23.
