Regardless of its particularity, Walde's best work
eclipses familiar or prevailing aesthetic conventions
in favour of experimentation and the advancement
of singularity. Walde's artwork habitually extends
into something slightly inscrutable to cognition and "meaning" that also possesses a highly charismatic
individuality. To reach social, cultural and political
relevance, the projects share a common goal: they
search out possibilities that can transform communication
and engagement between art and its public
into a number of singular experiences that work next
to but also beyond aesthetic, conceptual, textual,
ideological or retinal premises. In this sense, the project
attempts to present artwork as a nomenclature
in the process of self-actualisation. Although it is
sometimes difficult to precisely identify these creative
situations, there are several concepts Walde
aims to distinctly disassociate from.
Acknowledging the history of public and "context" art, as well as "in situ" practices, Walde takes a
defiant stand that departs distinctly from all these
premises. His is not context-oriented work in that
it relies on a mingling or exchanging of contexts.
Various de- and re-contextualization, although often
shedding light on a given situation, equally often result
in aestheticised and rather apologetic artworks
that function within the broader, but, nevertheless,
protected framework of the art world. Ironically,
context art can defuse "dangerous" possibilities
by transplanting them into an institutionalised,
accredited and therefore harmless framework.While on a basic, almost technical level, many of
Walde's projects are presented within an urban arena
they do not take "public art" as their premise. As has
often been shown, public art in itself is no guarantee
of developing communications. In fact, much public
art remains in the domain of the conventional, and
simply involves transplanting artwork into some socalled
public domain in the hope of spurring public
engagement. Further, Walde's artwork inverts the
concept of in situ by shifting away from its conventional
concept-based "grounding" in a specific site
to a less predictable and more intersubjective communication-oriented model.
For Days of Hope, an exhibition organized for the
Venice Biennale frame programme in 2001, Walde
proposed a work that offered a quite uncommon
situation. As with many of his projects, The Invisible Line was technically simple, but possessed a highly
charismatic individuality. It consisted of cardboard
boxes with various entrances and exits, with some
playthings that rats might like. Three rats were placed inside, encircled by an experimental rat repellent,
which kept them inside its perimeter.
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