As a result of its ambiguous form and material consistency the slippery animal – which inhabits myths and fairy-tales as a symbol of life and rebirth, as well as an impure creature and a poisoner of wells – offers ample material for creative progeny. In the frog, the monkey, the worm and finally in "Hallucigenia", Martin Walde has found key figures for his poetic and ironically distanced research into evolution, set at the limits of man's self-propagated overestimation. It all began in 1985 with a small frog made of orange-coloured cheese wax. Its transformation into the green frog more familiar to man has been accompanied by many
sensually charged frog 'varieties', as seen for instance in the installation Green Gel, which - according to its location – oscillates between being attractive in a poetic sense and/or perverted charm since 1989. While signs and the figure, like dummies or key figures, stand for the transformation of functional or creature-like 'objects' into possible images and narratives of reality, material and colour represent the physico-psychic perception of their potential existence in hy brid conditions. Just as the line transposes rationality into labyrinthine conditions of constant transgression between the harmony of geometric forms and the my stery of ciphered figures and incomprehensible words, Walde's materials –
wax, polystyrene, soap, gel, cloth and comparable materials – constantly catapult our perception of these things into conditions where seduction and repulsion are – at best – but fleetingly yet harmoniously balanced. And even when something of definable form or firmer substance seems to promise support, its unexpected collision with the soft and amorphous
further destabilises our perception. The green-dyed Handmates spread out on a long table at the documenta X were repeatedly stolen. By contrast, those Handmates that had been dyed violet triggered such aggression that they were often even squashed, like repulsive creatures. Psychologists, as much as historians in the fields of art and civilisation can probably give countless explanations for such reflex-like feelings, moving from harmony to aggression, as any visitors to the exhibition who attempt to feel in "hands-on" approach the hard core of the soft gel within its fine soft latex skin.