Franz Erhard Walther’s (1939, Fulda) broad oeuvre includes sculpture, architecture and performance. In the early 1960s, he adopted textiles as his preferred material, using coloured fabric to create geometric, cut-out sculptures that can be activated by one or more protagonists. Walther thus breaks with the traditional conception of a work as a fixed and immutable object. The work, rather, exists as it is manifested. The viewer is given creative agency to manipulate the work using the given tools necessary to create the sculpture, their body animating the works and ostensibly imbuing them with a physical, spatial and temporal dimension.

58 Werkzeichnungen (1963–72) is a group of fifty-eight mixed media works on paper. Each piece relates to an element of Walther’s best known work 1.Werksatz (1963–69), a series of sewn, padded, pleated and pocketed fabric objects, which can be exhibited in ‘lager (storage) form’ or as ‘sculptural actions in space’ with which the audience can interact with according to the artist’s instructions. For Walther, the meaning of any given work is a result of this activation, which can take the form of a physical manipulation or an intellectual engagement with the work as we imagine its final form. Walther describes ‘this moment of manipulation and action’ as ‘a main theme’ within his work. ‘The basic idea is to construct a work based on action,’ the artist says. The group of drawings that make up 58 Werkzeichnungen (58 Work Drawings), feature descriptions, instructions, diagrams and drawings that relate to this proposal.

Walther created the Wandformationen between 1979–89 employing the same formal vocabulary found in the Werkzeichnungen. These Mural Formations emphasise pictorial and architectural elements, the physical activation being no longer a requirement for these sculptures. The work Zwei Sockel. Halbierter Mantel (Two Plinths. Coat Cut in Two, 1981) is marked by the use of the colour burgundy (adopted by the artist in the 1970s), and by the introduction of the colour green. The coat, a recurring garment in subsequent works, appears here for the first time. Cut in two, it invites us to imagine the activation of the work by one or two people who could, as in all the Wandformationen, adopt three distinct positions: ‘in front, at the threshold, and inside.’