Franz Erhard Walther
The Memory of Form

Franz Erhard Walther, four-times documenta artist, leads the visitors into a unique sensual world of experience. With their whole bodies they perceive the room-filling, colour-intensive large-scale installation which transforms the floor and the walls in the Marta Dom into a fascinating field of tension of stitched forms and radiant colours.

Born in Fulda/Germany in 1939, around 1960 the artist developed a substantially new concept of the work. Since then he presents his mainly textile objects with equal status alongside their installation in the room, but just as they would be found in the warehouse: folded, stacked, laid out in compact blocks. This makes the work inviolably linked with the actions of the artist or the audience. They are the starting point for processes of sensual perception and physical experience. This takes place in the so-called work actions and work performances.

For the first time the whole bandwidth of his “Store of Sample Stitchings”, which has been constantly evolving since 1969, is to be shown in an exhibition project. Wall and floor pieces, soft and solid coloured bodies of fabric – folded, stored, stood up or hung – all combine to create a grandiose spatial form. The visitor finds himself before a precisely balanced, walk-in picture which is determined less by dramatic tension than by the profound, inner equilibrium of the colours and forms. At the same time, the pillars of a work developed uncompromisingly over more than 40 years are made clear.

Thank you