A Meditation on Utopia: The Works of Frank Walter Presented by Hilton Als
Before Mr. Als begins, we receive a teary-eyed speech from Barbara Paca, one of the primary experts on Frank Walter. She explains that, through the process of collecting Walter’s works, the Walter family have become like family to her. This speech is followed by a brief yet assured note from Jules Walter, Frank Walter’s nephew and the primary liaison for the Walter family in all things art, on the pride and joy he feels in being able to show the works of his late uncle.
Mr. Als ends the introductions with a discussion on how Caribbean artists like Walter are usually classified within the higher art sphere as outsiders while there is nothing in his form or his artist contemplations that would constitute him as anything but as a prolific, studied artist. He tells us that he would rather keep the walk-through brief and would prefer we spend time with the work on our own without too much deliberation. “But since you’re all here…”
The works themselves are both harrowing yet simple in their expressive beauty. They show a man who desperately wished to archive, quite extensively, the lands which housed and nurtured him. It was noted that Walter, with reluctance from his nephew Jules, would often spend weeks in isolation in a small inhabitants away from the family’s regular housing, only surviving on water and the most necessary nutrients. He lived for the sake of meditating on his utopia, and for that it feels only necessary that we observe his archive with the closeness he attempted to achieve with the landscape and characters themselves.
The show "By Land, Air, Home, and Sea: The World of Frank Walter," curated by Hilton Als, is open from June 2nd - July 29th 2022.
