... of functional or everyday connections through their usability and aesthetic attractiveness. They may be magnificently swinging awnings, also letting us experience basic architectural principles for shaping and organizing space – and it is extremely pleasant to stand under, between and in them and strike up conversations with people; they may be the lavishly curling tresses of industrial packing tape, or also the white edges at the periphery of the stearin lake, which break off effectively from time to time – but they are always pictorially intensive puzzles relating to extremely rational contexts, intending to show the way to their enlightening heart precisely through their presentational poetry.
It is sometimes surprising to learn what concrete
and entirely scientifically sound basic ideas lie behind
Walde's various installations. Something that starts
for him as an analysis of social, physical and organizational
phenomena, sometimes making magnificent
detours and leading to a seductively attractive, occasionally
also mysteriously beautiful installation, takes
precisely the opposite route as far as reception is
concerned. Making the world into a puzzle, the beauty
of the absurd or the lightness of a participative game
reveal complex connections and everyday, practical
confrontations in Walde's work; but they are intended
to be experienced sensually, practically and aesthetically
first of all, and only then recognized.In Martin Walde's installations, objects and drawings,
things are first and foremost what they are: they do
not refer to anything, they are neither symbols nor
immutable propositions, they simply rest on their own
poetry of suggestive power and constant change. As
there are no definitive instructions for dealing with
them, his works also have no precisely defined state
– their essence lies in the processual quality of direct
confrontation. At the same time, Martin Walde's very
diverse oeuvre focuses primarily on phenomena that
easily wrench themselves free from any theoretical
grasp, that play with the unexpected and incalculable,
but also with things that have been overlooked or
declared irrelevant. He is a precise observer of the
everyday, a great narrator of the casual, a finder and
inventor of forms: his objects are enticements, they
practically insist that we should touch them, distort
them, make them untidy or even tidy them up, look
for their secret. This means that Walde's sculptures
always have something to do with power and authority,
with hierarchies and conventions, and at the same
time they address the permeability of the border
between work of art, museum and public. They want
to touch and be touched.
