Exhibition catalogue. In the work of Johannes Wald (*Sindelfingen 1980, lives and works in Berlin), who sees himself as a conceptual sculptor, there are only a few works that correspond to the conventional idea of sculpture. Their creation is also not the focus of his interest. Instead, he looks for ways to convey new artistic experiences to the public as directly as possible.
Johannes Wald’s works are located on a meta-level and illustrate his reflections on sculpture-making and being an artist. Space, time and materials play a decisive role here. Wald intends to dissolve the separation between space, body and mind. In his imagination, the artist, the studio and the work merge. Accordingly, his precisely conceived exhibition spaces are to be understood as thinking spaces into which he allows his audience to immerse themselves. This way of working is based on the idea that the artist shapes himself through the reception of his works. The place of this process is the studio, which Wald sees as part of his psyche and his thinking.
To illustrate his ideas, Johannes Wald uses traditional sculptural materials such as wood, clay, plaster, bronze, aluminum, marble and paper, as well as digital media such as 3D video projections and augmented reality.  The continuous transformation of thoughts and language, which he also sees as sculptural material, leads to endless possibilities of artistic expression in both physical and imaginary space.

In his works, Johannes Wald reflects on fundamental, sculpture-related issues. When is a work considered to be finished or even perfect?  Can the process of being a process, the origin, be preserved in a work? Or do we only ever see the result of the process? Can a desire for grace and classical beauty still qualify credibly as a stimulus for our own actions?
He confronts the viewer again and again with gaps, placeholders or hidden sculptures and in this way relocates the consummate perfection of his artistic work to the realms of the imagination.

The exhibition title Whatness emphasizes the shared aspect in the work of two young sculptors, Esther Kläs and Johannes Wald. Their sculptures reflect the way sculpture emerges, the production process, but also the discrepancy between idea and realisation of a sculpture. Thus, book and exhibition tie in with the steady expansion of the concept of sculpture beginning in the 1960s. Johannes Wald, born in 1980 in Sindelfingen, formulates questions in relation to sculpture. Yet, primarily sculp­tural qualities, such as haptics, materiality and three-­dimensionality are secondary for Wald; his main interest is the disclosure of conditions, manufacturing processes and materials. Born in Mainz in 1981, and now living and working in New York, Esther Kläs examines in her re­duced sculptures the interplay of material, form and construction. Qualities imposed by the materials are ignored. The questions raised by her work, are aimed at the viewer, how they confront the sculptures and their willingness to classify them.