Franz Erhard Walther Frieze London Live, 2014

Frieze Art Fair, London At Frieze Live we are pleased to exhibit two works by Franz Erhard Walther : Sehkanal, 1968 Element No 46 from the 1. Werksatz and Winkel, 1975, a steel sculpture will both be exhibited in an open situation inside the fair tent, with trained performers activating the sculptures and inviting the public to engange in the art works. Franz Erhard Walther is a pioneer of minimal and conceptual art, introducing the action as a form of creation and reception in 1963. He has commited himself to the concept of sculpture as performance and participation, the notion that art is a collaborative event in which artist and public contribute on an equal footing. For Walther the meaning of a work has been what results from this collaboration. His objects and installations address their viewers with partly tactile, partly intellectual stimuli; they trigger the temptation to act, the desire to experience things in a physical way, and question their viewers’ positions in space and in relation to each other. As evolved over the last decades, Walther’s oeuvre presents an exemplary variety of methodological approaches. It also illustrates the difficulties faced by any form of art that hopes for participation on the part of the public, with the intention of making the appreciation of art a more collective, democratic enterprise. The objects stitched out of fabric from his “First Work Set” (1963–69) can be seen as the sculptural consequence of this search for a dynamic dimension in his plastic work, one that also characterizes his architectonic space modules of the 1970s.