Martin Kähler (b. 1987, Heidelberg, DE) is a sculptor and installation artist. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, where he graduated in 2016. He lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.
Drawing on a post-Arte Povera sensibility, Kähler works with construction leftovers, everyday objects and studio residues. His sculptures, hybrids of organic and industrial forms, focus on the relations that emerge when these materials are carefully brought together in response to process and site. He composes his provisional assemblies through balance, failure and meticulous adjustment, joining elements with porous plaster or wedging them into one another, tension both sustaining and threatening the stability of the whole. Yet the works retain a certain nonchalance, recalling sprezzatura, the effortless mastery that conceals its own labour.
Kähler has exhibited widely across Europe and in Asia. In 2014, he received the Rietveld Academy Fine Arts Award. In 2023, his work was presented at Kunstverein Nürtingen.
